Chidimma UCHEGBU
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 on 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 in 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 Afriexim 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.
Earlier, the 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 AfrieximBank to develop African Medical Centre of Excellence which the hospital is a key component of.
“Just recently, in November, we signed a memorandum of agreement with AfrieximBank 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.
