Faridat Ogundairo
The Director General of the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research, Prof. Babatunde Salako, has expressed concerns over the effectiveness of mosquito nets in the southern part of the country.
Salako emphasised the need for the government to explore alternative insecticides to impregnate nets.
According to him, mosquitoes in the region have developed a strong resistance to the nets, rendering them ineffective.
He suggested that the collaboration with manufacturers and researchers would be crucial in finding better and more effective solutions.
He said,”we have discovered that in the southern part of the country, the nets are not effective and the mosquitoes have developed resistance to the net,
This means that the government needs to find another insecticide to be used to impregnate the nets and that has to be discussed with the manufacturer and researcher to find a better and effective ones “.
Salako also highlighted the issue of Nigerian researchers leaving the country and not returning.
He said,”recently, we started loosing quite a number of professors in Nigerian universities, that was because many of them were going abroad and were not coming back”.
He revealed that this brain drain has particularly affected vaccine development, with a significant loss of talented individuals in the field as there has been a lack of replacements for these researchers, leading to a gap in vaccine development expertise.
“In the last three months, we had about three researchers that left and many of them were involved in very sensitive projects, we have not been opportune to replace some of them, especially in the area of vaccine development which is very disturbing and painful”, Salako said.
However, Salako did mention a positive development of an international study utilizing a locally developed mpox kit.
He revealed this kit, sponsored by the Canadian government, to have demonstrate the capability of Nigerian researchers to design, develop, and bring their products to the market.
He made it known that one unit of this kit has been sold for approximately N30m.
Given these circumstances, Salako urged the government to allocate more funding towards research, particularly for diseases that are currently ravaging the country.
He said,” Government must find researchers for the specific diseases that are ravaging. If they don’t put money into research, then we may not be able to generate new knowledge, drugs, vaccines and also determine new approaches to treatment and preventions”.
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