Facility Description
KIRCT is a multi-million dollar Biomedical Research institute that was built in 2013 as an international donation with the Kano State Government as custodian. The facility was initially utilized as a teaching hospital due to its huge size. However, in 2021, the Kano State Government decided to convert the facility into an independent research trust that is free from the influence of Government or other private entity. Accordingly, a board of trustees was formed and a Founding CEO/Director (Professor Hamisu M. Salihu) was appointed following an exhaustive international search. KIRCT is located on the suburb of Kano City in northern Nigeria with a population (i.e., Kano City only) of about 4.5 million people. Kano State itself (there are 36 States in Nigeria) has a population of over 15 million people.
KIRCT is situated at the intersection of the Kano urban and Kano rural areas. KIRCT is a huge facility which is considered to be the largest standalone biomedical research institute in terms of physical size in West Africa, and as one of the largest in Africa. The facility encompasses four main sections: a suite of bungalows for the facility staff; a huge lab facility for human and animal research; the hospital section and the administrative building. KIRCT comprises about 45 staff members with room for expansion over time, and as its expertise becomes more diverse. The staff members include research assistants, junior and senior researchers, medical personnel (doctors and nurses), as well as seasoned administrators and financial managers. Junior and senior researchers work in three main units:
(1) Epidemiology and Population Health;
(2) Maternal and Child Health; and
(3) Health Metrics and Artificial Intelligence.
Epidemiology and Population Health Unit: The mission of this unit is the exploration and understanding of the social ecology of disease causation with the overarching goal of control and prevention. Staff of the unit conduct periodic community-based disease assessment and surveillance within the Tamburawa community in the Dawakin Kudu local government area (population = 370,900) where the Centre is physically located.
The Unit collaborates closely with local government authorities, the Kano CDC (Centre for Disease Control), the Kano State Tuberculosis and Leprosy Control Programme, and the Kano State Ministry of Health with respect to TB and MDR-TB surveillance.
The unit also partners with federal agencies (e.g., NACA: National Agency for the Control of AIDS and the National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Control Programme) to perform programmatic and individual-level assessments. Researchers at KIRCT recently collaborated with NACA and conducted the world’s largest HIV/AIDS survey in Nigeria, and they were also responsible for establishing quality matrix for the validation of the BIG database that was constructed for the survey (Salihu HM, Yusuf Z, Dongarwar D, Aliyu SH, Yusuf RA, Aliyu MH, Aliyu G. Development of a Quality Assurance Score for the Nigeria AIDS Indicator and Impact Survey (NAIIS) Database: Validation Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research (Formative Research). 2022 Jan 28;6(1):e25752. doi: 10.2196/25752.PMID: 35089143).
The Unit currently has an ongoing grant to train NACA staff in data system management and analytics of “BIG DATA”. Epidemiologists from the Centre have played a critical role during the Covid-19 pandemic with their huge international contributions that include:
1) The establishment of an international and secure informatics infrastructure to investigate COVID-19 in collaboration with data scientists from the US, Canada, Singapore, China, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and Australia (the SCOR Consortium);
2) The PEI (Pandemic Efficiency Index) for global ranking of COVID-19-related mortality was invented by and credited to our scientist (Professor Salihu HM).
Maternal and Child Health Unit: Kano State has one of the worst rates of maternal and child mortality in the world. The main mission of the unit is to partner with local, national and international stakeholders to promote the health and wellbeing of the mother and child, as well as prevent morbidity and mortality. We collaborate with the UNDP-UNFPA-UNICEF-WHO-World Bank Special Programme of Research to train physicians and public health MCH professionals in the use of data for decision-making in all federal health facilities in Nigeria. We also partner with the Center of Excellence in Population Health and Policy (ACEPHAP), Bayero University, Kano on grants from the World Bank to create innovative technology for use by pregnant and post-partum mothers in order to reduce maternal-fetal adverse events via educational videos and linkage to a health facility closest to them for delivery. With grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, we are partnering with the same organization in piloting a community-based intervention trial to assess the feasibility of prophylactic therapeutics in reducing adverse maternal outcomes.
Health Metrics and Artificial Intelligence Unit: The unit staff members are comprised of computer and data scientists who undertake “BIG DATA” activities through linkage of data from across several data sources and formats including public health records, medical records, administrative data, and data from social media streams. The current EMR (Electronic Medical Record) being utilized at the Centre’s hospital was designed and implemented by the unit. The Centre’s EMR is currently one of the digital systems being considered by the Federal Ministry of Health for adoption by federal health facilities as well as for public health surveillance and disease tracking nationwide. The EMR integrates clinical, laboratory, and epidemiologic data into a single system, and is currently being strengthened with an artificial intelligence pipeline to scale up its capability and utility across various users. The unit is partnering with the University of Health Sciences in Houston, Texas (USA) to establish a training center in Kano to build capacity in Nigeria in healthcare artificial intelligence (HAI)