Health: Nigeria is rich in intellectual capacity, take advantage of it, expert tells FG

 

 

Prof. William Blattner, an internationally renowned expert on AIDS, says Nigeria is rich in intellectual capacity and the Federal Government should take advantage of it to address its healthcare system challenges.

 

Blattner, founder of the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN), said this on Monday in Abuja, at the IHVN and the International Research Centre of Excellence (IRCE) Scientific Seminar.

 

Its theme  was: “Addressing local health challenges through research and partnerships.”

 

He said that a healthy population was one of the nation’s most important assets,  adding that it was invaluable in its own right and also created value for society.

 

“Action is needed across the whole of government to address this healthcare delivery.

 

“Investment needs to be directed towards areas of public spending that creates the right conditions for people to lead healthy lives.

 

“Stronger measures are needed to ensure that government is held to account for the health of the population,” he said.

 

According to him, Nigeria cannot have a health care system where one speciality is separate from another.

 

He said that the country needed to be able to provide holistic care and it is needed to achieve efficiencies by training and empowering all professionals in the health sector.

 

“Training the nurses and other care professionals to have greater capacity and greater ability to contribute to health care delivery is desirable.

 

“So you have to expand on the access to people by having a cadre of pharmacists, nurses, or other care professionals contributing to the health care team, to optimize efficiency,” he said.

 

Commenting on the feature of HIV, he said comorbid non-communicable disease burden, long-term consequences of HIV exposed uninfected infants.

 

He said that vaccine was unlikely in short term, given the high variability of the virus.

 

Prof. Robert Gallo, the globally acclaimed co-discoverer of HIV, said that the virus would reach a functional cure.

 

“I think that would mean, we won’t need therapy anymore or at least; it will be rare to use it or unusual to need it. I believe, however, that it won’t be from the way things have developed so far.

 

“We have had serious success in the treatment of a viral systemic disease, HIV/AIDS, which is the first time in the history of medicine that a serial systemic viral disease has been treated and treated successfully,” he said.

 

Gallo said that objective data would arise on the immune response.

 

“Now, with combination therapy and many drug companies, we have reached the now epidemy, probably as far as we can go by targeting steps in the HIV replication cycle.

 

“We gained the ability to do this off the molecular virology of understanding each step of viral replication of HIV.

 

“Though we have these drugs targeting these steps, I think we have now run out of steps of what will lead to long-lasting drugs and better delivery,” he said.

 

According to him, “Where will the next advances come from in my judgment? I think out of detailed studies of pathogenesis, namely the mechanisms of how HIV causes AIDS.

 

“I believe that with great progress in that line in the coming years. I am feeling extremely happy that I am part of the collaboration with French colleagues and other colleagues in the United States, in Italy and in Belgium.”

 

The Chief Executive Officer of IHVN, Nigeria, Dr Patrick Dakum, said government needed to give health professionals opportunities, especially through funding, to showcase their talents.

 

“If we go to the universities and ask them how much is the research budget, it’s very minimum.

 

“So I think that the government’s deliberate development is aimed at a lot of research in various fields. And If we neglect research we are neglecting the future,” he said.

 

Dakum said that the country could not become the world-class that it wants to be if there were not adequate funding for research.

 

“We will continue to advocate, continue to show data to the government that will enable the government to do the right thing, and we will continue to work with the agencies of government that are at the forefront of doing this.

 

“Sometimes we the implementing partners approach the government, maybe we can even do a better job than the agency heads themselves who are part and parcel of government and that is the best we will continue to do,” he stressed.

 

He stressed the need for private sector collaboration and they also needed to realise that they had a responsibility to contribute to the health sector.

 

According to him, one low-hanging fruit is the expansion of the Community Health Insurance Scheme, once the government can do this, it can cover the basics and then we move on to other areas.

 

For more than 19 years since IHVN’s establishment as a non-profit and non-governmental organization, it has addressed the HIV/AIDS crisis in Nigeria by developing infrastructure for treatment, care, prevention, and support for people living with and affected with HIV/AIDS.

 

IHVN has, over time, expanded its services to cover other communicable and non-communicable diseases such as Tuberculosis, Malaria, Cancer, COVID-19, and other emerging diseases. (NAN)