Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State has unveiled the Society for Family Health Innovation Hub to accelerate quality health solutions for families.
Represented by the Commissioner for Health, Prof Akin Abayomi, the governor unveiled the hub in Ikeja, on Friday.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the building, spread across three floors, was to honour the memory of one of SFH’s founders and a former Minister of Health, Prof Olikoye Ransome-Kuti.
Sanwo-Olu said innovation had always been a driving force behind advancements in health, revolutionising the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases.
According to him, the state and country had alarming health statistics that should bother all citizens, lamenting that almost all equipment, drugs, and vaccines used in the health sector were imported.
“We’re just beginning to make a dent into the pharmaceutical space. We’re starting to make more varieties of pharmaceuticals in Nigeria, particularly in Lagos and Ogun states.
“But, you know, those are simple drugs. Now, we want to start moving into more complex formulas and drive the industry around vaccine development.
“Manufacturing vaccines is backed by a whole culture of research, innovation and development,” he said.
He said the SFH and the Ministry of Health were collaborating on some challenges plaguing the public health environment, especially on malaria and fevers.
“We are at a fairly advanced stage in developing certain key strategies to bring down the incidence of malaria in Nigeria and to even get to the point where we can talk about elimination of malaria from this environment.
“We’ve heard that certain parts of Africa are close to the elimination of malaria. That’s not going to happen just by praying and wondering how to do it.
“It’s going to happen by collaborating, by being intentional, by thinking about the problem and trying to find the solution,” he said.
Sanwo-Olu said the SFH lab would aid ideation, and collaboration and contribute to enhancing national ecosystems that enable the systematic use of innovation to promote health equity.
The governor commended SFH for the initiative and its honour of Prof Ransome-Kuti, who he described as a visionary leader who transformed the nation’s health sector.
Similarly, Kwara State Commissioner for Health, Dr Amina El-Amin, said the hub provided an opportunity for physical and intellectual synergy to tackle the challenges in the Nigerian health space.
El-Amin noted that strategic public/private collaboration was critical to homegrown solutions that would advance local manufacturing and quality healthcare services.
“So, in Nigeria, we want hubs like this, where people can ideate, co-create, share ideas, bounce ideas off one another, test their ideas, and execute them before they are taken out and deployed into the field.
“This is the way we will succeed in Nigeria, not by importing ideas that were not designed for our peculiarity and for our people,” she said.
Commenting, the Board President of SFH, Prof Ekanem Braide, said the hub would serve as a co-creation space to host start-ups and think tanks to accelerate impact and digital health-driven solutions.
“The SFH Innovation Hub is a testament to our belief that health solutions must be anchored in creativity, co-creation, and collaboration.
“In today’s rapidly evolving health landscape, we face challenges that demand adaptive, forward-thinking solutions.