The Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) has entered into a partnership with NSIA-LUTH Cancer Centre and BIO Ventures for Global Health (BVGH) to reduce the impact of cancer.
Under the arrangement, the NSIA will benefit from BVGH’s African Access Initiative (AAI), which is suited to enabling both parties to achieve their objective of containing cancer-related mortality in the country.
According to a statement from the NSIA, “cancer is a serious health threat in Nigeria, with 116,000 new cancer cases reported each year and more than 70,000 deaths annually”.
Beyond the devastating effect on the populace, cancer and its treatment the NSIA said “result in the loss of economic resources and opportunities for patients, families, employers, and society overall”.
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 partnership with BVGH is helping to attain these objectives.
The NSIA-LUTH Cancer Centre and BVGH partnership focuses on three core deliverables which are to: establish sustainable access to high quality and affordable cancer medicines and technologies; build clinical and radiation oncology expertise by helping to train and expand the skills of oncologists and forge international partnerships and catalyse clinical research.
The statement said: “NSIA relies on partnerships with organisations that complement and strengthen its investments in healthcare infrastructure to continually improved treatment technics available at the facility.”
The 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.
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 Mr. Uche Orji, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, NSIA.
According to Prof. Chris Bode, the Chief Medical Director, Lagos University Teaching Hospital “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 and Chief Executive Officer (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”.
“Our partnership with BVGH has quickly and effectively delivered on several NLCC core objectives including expanding access to prioritized 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 realize its goals in containing the disease burden of cancer. We look forward to continuing our work with BVGH in 2021 and beyond,” stated Dr.Tolulope Adewole, CEO NSIA-LUTH Cancer Center.
