Nigeria: How to bridge health research gaps

What are those things you have come to notice about Nigerians mindset on accessing health care? The major issues in Africa are affordability and patient waiting time. For instance, why will I take my child to a private hospital, for immunisation and pay lots of money when such service is available for free at the government hospital?
Another issue is why are pregnant women not patronising government hospitals for antenatal care? Research has shown that over 50 per cent of pregnant women still do not complete antenatal care.
Your outfit has been involved in carrying out epidemiological studies, what are some of the findings of these studies? Health issues will continue to arise. They are easily discovered in developed countries as they come up, the case is not so in developing countries. This has to do with monitoring of diseases.
Our past activities on HIV, for instance showed that though the awareness level of this disease is very high, knowledge level is quite low. For instance, everybody is aware of malaria and that they should sleep under mosquito nets, but how many people actually sleep under these nets? Few people do.
Personal hygiene is another issue. Many people know they must regularly wash their hands, but how many people do so? These are simple issues that will prevent diseases.
So what can STREAM Insight do? We help to assess knowledge, awareness and other risk factors of any disease in order to bring such findings out to effect a change.
The health research you get involved in, who finances them? Companies, including Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) finance these studies. Government could also get more involved in research to understand and monitor disease so that less money is spent on curative medicine. Let’s go the preventive way!
What is your take on clinical trials? Are they supposed to be allowed in the country? Clinical trials should be allowed in Nigeria because we need to develop, discover new drugs and try more drugs. However, the issue of ethics is very crucial and should not be undermined. Clinical trials are still up-coming in Nigeria.
You are involved in Health awareness surveys. Of what importance are these?
It will afford government and other organisations assess people’s knowledge on various diseases, the risk factors, how to prevent them and other issues surrounding them. This will help manage people and available resources for health development.