The Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) on Tuesday announced an expanded strategic partnership between NSIA-LUTH Cancer Centre and BIO Ventures for Global Health (BVGH) to bolster cancer treatment in Nigeria.
The NSIA-LUTH Cancer Centre and BVGH partnership focuses on three core deliverables, including establishing sustainable access to quality and affordable cancer medicines and technologies, building clinical and radiation oncology expertise by helping to train and expand the skills of oncologists, and building international partnerships and catalyze clinical research.
The partnership builds further on the solid foundation of programmes led by BVGH that is delivering value to the LUTH Cancer Centre and helping to improve treatment for Nigerians.
In 2019, NSIA set up a world-class cancer centre in LUTH to enable early detection and treatment of the disease which is increasingly becoming a health burden in the country.
Nigeria currently records over 116,000 new cancer cases each year and more than 70,000 deaths annually. Beyond the devastating effect on the populace, cancer and its treatment result in the loss of economic resources and opportunities for patients, families, employers, and society overall.
Under the arrangement, the NSIA will benefit from BVGH’s African Access Initiative (AAI) which is suited to enable both parties to achieve their objective of containing cancer-related mortality in the country.
“Despite the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic, our partnership with BVGH is stronger than ever and our resolve to improve cancer patient outcomes is unflinching. This partnership will not only improve access to quality cancer treatment for Nigerian citizens, but also strengthen our economy as medical tourism is made unnecessary for cancer treatment,” said Uche Orji, managing director/CEO of NSIA.
NSIA’s healthcare investments focus on cancer with the aim of providing sustainable, high quality, and affordable treatment for Nigerians to reduce medical tourism.
The authority relies on partnerships with organisations that complement and strengthen its investments in healthcare infrastructure to continually improve treatment technics available at the facility. The partnership with BVGH is helping to attain these objectives.
“NSIA has embraced BVGH’s support considering the NGO’s flexibility, responsiveness, determination, dependability, and alignment with the authority’s objectives for its healthcare portfolio and the intended benefit for Nigerians,” NSIA explained in a mailed note.
According to Chris Bode, a professor and chief medical director, Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), “we are excited at the partner between NLCC and BVGH. It is expected that the combined effort and commitment of both institutions to deliver the target outcomes in terms of expected quality and scale of care will value to the Nigerian people”.
Commenting on the partnership, Jennifer Dent, president/CEO of BVGH said: “The partnership with the NSIA-LUTH Cancer Centre is part of our broader goal of designing and building sustainable access to cancer treatments. Our position remains that advocacy for cancer prevention and domiciliation of quality treatment for patients in Nigeria must be done in parallel and at scale if the longer-term objective of reversing medical tourism and eliminating the scourge of cancer is to be achieved. However, we are confident that the model adopted with the NLCC will go a long way in improving the survival rate in Nigeria”.
For Tolulope Adewole, CEO NSIA-LUTH Cancer Centre, their “partnership with BVGH has quickly and effectively delivered on several NLCC core objectives including expanding access to prioritised medicines and building capacity across our healthcare team. Even though the critical importance of accessing quality cancer care is heightened by the pandemic, BVGH’s partnership is helping NLCC realise its goals in containing the disease burden of cancer. We look forward to continuing our work with BVGH in 2021 and beyond.”
