In an effort to improve the country’s public health infrastructure, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) has established the National Genomics Sequencing Consortium.
As the NCDC’s mandate dictates, the effort would also strengthen our health security, according to Dr. Jide Idris, director-general of the organisation, and establish Nigeria as a key hub for genomic research in the global south.
“Genomic sequencing has numerous benefits for health security, as we are all aware.” These include fast pathogen identification and characterisation, disease surveillance, outbreak detection, and transmission patterns.
In general, he stated, “genomic sequencing improves our capacity to address health risks by offering comprehensive insights into the genetic foundations of illnesses, permitting more accurate and successful public health interventions.”
Jide pointed out that there haven’t been enough rules controlling the exchange of genetic surveillance data outside of Nigeria, especially between the academic and business sectors.
According to him, the gap has led to major data losses and missed chances for the good of the country.
There is no national genomics data repository in Nigeria that is centralised. Creating a thorough plan to create such a repository and guarantee data sharing, preservation, and use for the good of our country would be a primary objective.
According to him, “another goal of our strategy would be to improve connectivity between different disease control programmes and current surveillance networks, initially within our national jurisdiction and subsequently at the regional level.”