Yakubu Gowon Varsity To Build Homegrown Expertise For Tackling Sickle Cell Disease

The National Centre of Excellence for Sickle Cell Disease Research and Training (NCESRTA), Yakubu Gowon University (formerly University of Abuja), has launched a 12-week intensive grooming programme to physique section expertise successful objective trials for sickle compartment illness (SCD).

Sponsored by IQVIA successful collaboration with Bio Ventures for Global Health, the programme runs from September 18 to November 27, 2025, and is designed to hole Nigerian researchers and clinicians to enactment successful groundbreaking objective trials.

Speaking astatine the opening ceremonial of the grooming successful Abuja connected Thursday, Professor Obiageli Nnodu, Director of NCESRTA,
said sickle compartment illness remains 1 of the astir prevalent familial humor disorders successful sub-Saharan Africa and a starring origin of mortality among children nether 5 and young adults.

According to her, the grooming was designed to code this spread by equipping healthcare workers with the tools to prosecute successful planetary trials, noting that the programme was not aimed astatine investigating a circumstantial attraction but alternatively astatine strengthening the wide capableness of objective sites.

“We are not targeting immoderate circumstantial treatment. What we are doing is strengthening the capableness of healthcare workers and objective sites to enactment successful aboriginal trials successful sickle compartment disease. Once you person that training, the skills tin besides beryllium applied to different areas specified arsenic oncology, hypertension, diabetes, and pulmonary diseases,” she said.

The grooming volition beryllium delivered virtually with play interactive sessions facilitated by objective proceedings experts, regulatory professionals, and fiscal specialists, with accent connected applicable application.

She said involvement successful the programme has already surpassed expectations, portion 5 participants from each of the 25 SPARC-Net sites were mandated to register, much than 460 individuals person signed up online.

“The involvement has extended beyond Nigeria, with participants from Sudan, Zambia, and different countries besides registering.”

Professor Nnodu noted that erstwhile the programme was publicised connected LinkedIn, it recorded implicit 16,000 views, a awesome of the increasing request for specified capacity-building opportunities.

She further explained that 1 of the outcomes of the grooming volition beryllium a insubstantial documenting the challenges of conducting objective trials successful resource-limited settings, drafting from experiences astatine NCESRTA and different SPARC-Net sites.

“The semipermanent extremity is sustainability. This is astir gathering homegrown expertise. If Nigeria tin tally its ain high-quality trials, we tin present much effective, patient-centered attraction for sickle compartment illness and yet prevention much lives,” she added.

Also speaking, Beno Nyam Yakubu, Head of Clinical Trials astatine NAFDAC, emphasised the agency’s relation successful ensuring the protocols conscionable some nationalist and planetary standards.

“For each objective proceedings submission, we measurement the benefit-risk ratio and measure the protocol to guarantee it aligns with our regulatory requirements.

“Our mean turnaround clip is 60 moving days, but nether the fast-track pathway, peculiarly during emergencies, approvals tin beryllium granted wrong 10 to 15 moving days,” he stated.