The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has assured of its readiness to provide support for King’s College, London, on its partnership with the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) towards establishing a medical school in Abuja.
Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono, gave the assurance during a visit to his office by a senior delegation from the King’s College on Tuesday in Abuja.
Echono, who expressed delight over the Abuja medical school project, said the Fund is always ready to partner with various bodies in the area of research to address challenges facing the country.
“Given our heritage and long years of partnership with the UK, we are always delighted to have opportunities for collaboration in various fronts.
” I also want to add that in recognition of the huge challenge we face as a country especially in the area of life sciences, medical sciences and the huge foreign exchange expended annually on medical tourism to so many countries on the globe, we welcome any effort that will try and create local content to bring here such modern facilities to the right faculties to ensure we deliver tertiary health care to our people,” he said.
Speaking further, Echono said TETFund was also working alongside others to put in place a modern research centre in Abuja that will draw researchers and postgraduate scholars from existing colleges and universities of medical sciences, among others.
He said the Fund would explore areas of collaboration with the Afreximbank and King’s College on the area of facilities, staff training and research.
“We (Nigeria) are also establishing institutions that will focus on the health and life sciences sector, and we believe if we can have this type of partnership and draw the right personnel, and with Afrexim Bank involvement we believe we will be able to provide modern facilities that will set the standard. It is like a model and they will look up to it, with collaboration and partnership, with joint research programmes, they can also help uplift all the other nascent institutions.
“We also have a robust training programme for our personnel, including facilities of our institutions, so we will look at that opportunity because TETFund has an academic staff training programme,” Echono added.
Echono said Nigeria needs an integrated approach to Medicare and the life sciences generally, noting that the Fund is playing a very supportive role in that regard.
“We will have a role to play in terms of developing human capital and also providing facilities especially when it relates to our missions that we currently support through facilities infrastructure, and then staff training and development, but more importantly also in advancing research.
“Because, we’ve been supporting multidisciplinary research and across board with various partners, but at Barbarina institutions and for institution, they have partnerships, but you also encouraged human agencies locally, multiple, multi agencies were engaged in multidisciplinary research and the life sciences the Health Sciences is one top area we are based on demand and need.
“We will focus on also prioritizing resources for I think it’s second only to agriculture, agriculture first and the life sciences. So, we will see that a template can be designed that will enable us to map out what the potential is,” he added.
Earlier, leader of the delegation and Deputy Vice President, King’s College, London, Dr Helen Bailey, said one of the institution’s partners was working with Afreximbank on the Abuja medical school project.
“One of our partner hospitals, King’s College Hospital is working in partnership with Afreximbank to develop the African Medical Centre of Excellence which the hospital is a key component of.
“Just recently, in November, we signed a memorandum of agreement with Afreximbank to provide a short consultancy project to explore the development of a medical school; a nursing school and a research centre to be co-located with the hospital in the outskirts of Abuja, ” Dr Bailey said.
She said Kings College boasts of one of the largest partnerships with different hospitals in Europe, that also provide education training and research.
While saying the Abuja medical centre would address the issue of brain drain in the country, Dr Bailey said King’s College was fully ready to collaborate with TETFund and other relevant government bodies to achieve the desired goal.
She further said some of the challenges outlined by the Fund are exactly what they face in the UK.
“It’s a merger between clinical care, advancing clinical care, and looking closer with research and education.
“And it’s that tripartite mission which underpins what we do at Kings across our partnership that has been described with the university in the NHS Trust.
“And that’s essentially what you’re trying to do here. And so, we’re, as Helen says, we’re, we’re here to advise Brexit on how to go about delivering on those three pillars.
“As you probably know, their interests in the hospital are focusing on oncology, hematology, and cardiovascular research, which are strengths at King’s College Hospital, one of our partner NHS Trusts.
“And so, we are trying to advise them on how to develop their educational and research direction about how to develop their research agenda and strategy and vision where they can probably provide unique angles on research in those areas,” she added.
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