Health Minister Tasks Agencies On Business Partnerships, Cancer Prevention
By Alice Etuka, Abuja
The Minister of State for Health & Social Welfare, Dr. Iziaq Salako has urged management of the Nigeria Institute for Pharmaceutical & Research Development (NIPRD) to consider business venture partnerships that will develop some of its products.
Deputy Director, Information & Public Relations of the Ministry, Alaba Balogun disclosed this in a statement on Thursday.
According to the statement, Dr. Salako gave the charge during his Familiarization visits to agencies and parastatals of the Ministry.
At the Nigeria Institute for Pharmaceutical & Research Development (NIPRD) at Idu Industrial layout Abuja, the Honourable Minister led by the Director General, Dr. Obi Adigwe took an assessment tour of various departments of the institute.
During a round table interactive meeting with the management staff, Dr. Salako stated that the institution is very pivotal to unlocking the health care value chain agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for the country.
To this end, he admonished the Director General of NIPRD, Dr. Obi Adigwe and his team to consider business venture partnerships that will develop some of its products, with a possibility of assessing USD1bn on the table from the AFREXIM Bank.
Dr. Salako further buttressed this innovative proposition by assuring support of the Ministry towards projecting many of NIPRDs products on the table of Physicians.
NIPRD, he stated, is considered by the Ministry as a very important agency in its agenda of ensuring universal health coverage for Nigerians and, commitment to reversing the direction of medical tourism.
Meanwhile, at the Nigerian Institute for Cancer Research & Treatment (NICRAT), Dr. Salako urged the Director- General, Dr. Usman Aliyu and his team to prioritise research around prevention, services around prevention and, advocacy around prevention as a key element of its agenda.
“We know that whether we prevent, people will still come under with the disease. So we must also be prepared to provide qualitative care for people with the disease. To catch them very early through screening services.
“This is a very important disease or diseases that we must, all of us, sit down to frontally address. Which means that our efforts, our strategy need to be optimally tailored towards prevention and control, towards increasing awareness, towards improving the health literacy of Nigerians. Because quite a number of these cancers are preventable”, the Minister stated.
To achieve maximum advocacy and preventable strategy therefore, he strongly urged both the Cancer programme in the Ministry and NICRAT to synergize and collaborate for one World Cancer Day Celebration next month February.
Consequently, the Minister explained that the Cancer Health Fund was a fund set apart to assist and support people who need cancer care but could not afford it.
“It is currently operating in some centres and, it’s targeted at specific cancers, not all cancers.
So this is an initiative to ensure that care “is made available to vulnerable Nigerians who cannot afford it. We are hoping that during this budget cycle, we can expand the Cancer fund and make it more robust.
“If there are more resources available, we can bring on board more centres and, more cancer types”, he said.
