FG to support Kano Independent Research Centre Trust to optimise research potential – Coordinating Health Minister

The Federal Government has pledged to support the Kano Independent Research Centre Trust (KIRCT) towards finding fitting and lasting research solutions to healthcare challenges that confront Nigerians.

Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare Professor Ali Pate disclosed this when he paid a working visit to the research institute.

Pate expressed delight at the biomedical research potentials of the Centre, expressing optimism that they “would be able to generate knowledge that is fitting with our context, with our problems.”

“We have good people working very hard here, investigating diseases that affect our people and in doing so, we can find solutions that fit within the context of Nigeria,” he affirmed.

“So, I am very excited to see what the centre is planning to do and we will find ways to mobilise support to enable them to succeed in what they are planning to do,” he added.

He charged the research workers at the centre to redoublé their efforts with all view to optimising the goals of setting up the research institute.

“At the end of the day, no one would build your country for you. No country succeeds in moving forward without the country making up its mind to move forward” he declared.

He pledged to get the Director General of the Institute, Professor Hamisu Salihu to accompany him to the UN conference in Newyork, hoping to add his voice to the Centre’s push for partnership with some international health institutions.

Earlier in his remarks, the Director General of the centre, Professor Hamisu Salisu described the research institute as the largest biomedical research centre, not just in Nigeria, but in the whole of Africa. He said the Centre held huge potential for the health benefits of the people of the state, for Nigerians and for the global community, while offering to assist the government in warehousing its vaccines.

The Director-General, however, sought the support of the Federal Ministry of Health to enable them to digitalise health facilities in the North.

“We want to partner with the Federal Ministry to see whether we can digitalise the entire Northern Nigeria so that all the health facilities in the region would be digitalised,” he stated.

“We also do community surveillance for infectious diseases and we are creating a register for that and when the time comes, I will give you a progress report,” he told the minister.

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Hamisu Salihu MD, PhD