The University of Benin’s Africa Centre of Excellence in Reproductive Health Research and Innovation (CERHI) is committed to addressing reproductive health challenges in West Africa. The Centre Leader, Professor Friday Okonofua, who stated this at a meeting of the Expanded Project Management Committee (EPMC), held at UNIBEN, recently, said that the Centre was focusing on four thematic areas: family planning, reduction of maternal mortality, unsafe abortion and HIV. He said that publications in high impact journals, by students and faculty in these areas, would help improve knowledge base and policy formulation.
Professor Okonofua explained that the Centre was conceived to respond to the myriad of reproductive health challenges facing the West African sub-region. According to him, inadequate human resource development was one of the major underlying factors responsible for the region’s poor performance in reproductive health, adding that only a few universities in West Africa currently offered courses in the field. CERHI was, therefore, established as a multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary, cross-border international project, which would produce ‘industry ready’ manpower in the field of Reproductive Health, while also focusing on research, with the ultimate aim of improving the Maternal and Child Health indices in the West African sub-region.
Under CERHI, he said, short courses, Masters and PhD programmes are run in four participating Departments, Obstetrics and Gynaecology; Community Health; Nursing; and Health Economics. The Centre Leader added that national, regional and international partners who would assist the Centre in the achievement its aims and objectives had also been identified.
In his remarks, the Deputy Centre Leader, Professor Obehi H. Okojie, advised that, for ease of accountability and logistics, Course Co-ordinators for the various courses should be domiciled in the participating departments.
Participants mooted the idea of CERHI signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), to forestall the disruption of the Centre’s activities by an industrial action. It was noted that once the CERHI building was ready, its students may be able to attend their lectures unhindered in the event of any industrial action.
The meeting decided on academic programmes to be offered in the various departments of the Centre and identified specific roles for partners. It discussed the Centre’s short courses and methods of decentralising their delivery. It also discussed the formulation of priorities for applied research by CERHI and its partners, among other issues.
One of the highlights of the meeting was the inauguration of the International Advisory Board (IAB). No fewer than 38 participants attended the meeting including, Professor Andrzej Kulczychi of the University of Alabama, Birmingham; representatives from the National Institute of Medical Research; University of Ibadan; Ondo State University of Medical Sciences; Federal Ministry of Health and participating Departments, among others.