By FUNMILAYO ADEYEMI

The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has assured of its readiness to provide support for King’s College, London, on its partnership with the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) toward establishing a medical school in Abuja.

The Executive Secretary of TETFund, Sonny Echono, made this known during a visit to his office by a senior delegation from the King’s College on Tuesday in Abuja.

Echono, who expressed delight over the medical school project, said the Fund was always ready to partner various bodies in the area of research to address challenges facing the country.

“Giving our heritage and long years of partnership with UK, we are always delighted to have opportunities for collaboration in various fronts.

“In recognition of the huge challenge we face as a country especially in the area of life sciences, medical sciences and the huge foreign exchange expended annually on medical tourism, we welcome any effort that will try and create local content.

“To bring here such modern facilities to the right faculties to ensure we deliver tertiary health care to our people,” he said.

Echono further said the Fund was also working alongside others to put in place a modern research centre in Abuja that would draw researchers and postgraduate scholars from existing colleges and universities of medical sciences, among others.

He said the TETFund would explore areas of collaboration with the Afreximbank and King’s College on the area of facilities, staff training and research.

“We (Nigeria) are also establishing institutions that will focus on the health and life sciences sector.

“And we believe if we can have this type of partnership and draw the right personnel, and with Afriexim Bank involvement, we believe we will be able to provide modern facilities that will set the standard.

“It is like a model and they will look up to it, with collaboration and partnership, with joint research programmes, they can also help uplift all the other nascent institutions.

“We also have a robust training programme for our personnel, including facilities of our institutions, so we will look at that opportunity because TETFund has academic staff training programme,” Echono added.

Earlier, leader of the delegation and Deputy Vice President, King’s College, London, Dr Helen Bailey, said one of the institution’s partners was working with Afreximbank on the proposed medical school project in Abuja.

Bailey said the medical centre would address the issue of brain drain in the country, adding that King’s College was fully ready to collaborate with TETFund and other relevant government bodies to achieve the desired goal.

“One of our partner hospitals, King’s College Hospital is working in partnership with Afreximbank to develop African Medical Centre of Excellence (AMCE), which the hospital is a key component of.

“Just recently, in November, we signed memorandum of agreement with Afreximbank to provide a short consultancy project to explore the development of a medical school; a nursing school and a research centre to be co-located with the hospital in the outskirts of Abuja, ” Bailey said.

She said King’s College boasts of one of the largest partnerships with different hospitals in

Europe, that also provided education training and research. (NAN)

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