By: Emmanuel Akayeti
The Navrongo Health Research Center (NHRC), of the Upper East Region, has organized a day’s durbar to disseminate major activities conducted by the Center to the Chiefs of the Kassena–Nankana Districts and other stakeholders.
Since the inception of the Navrongo Health Research Center (NHRC) in 1988 by the British, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and the Ministry of Health (MH) it has been working with the full support of the Chiefs and people of the Kassena-Nankana area in the administration of Vitamin A supplementation among others.
In 1992, the Ministry of Health made it the first Research Center in the country which grew from strength to strength to date.
The Director of the Center Dr. Patrick Ansah stated in an interview that the Centre could not have attained the great height but for the cooperation of the Chiefs and people.
He said that NHRC is a community-based Research Centre and one of their strongest point is how they work in collaboration with the community, engaging them and seeking their views of how they want some things to be done and this is the social aspect of integrating the community into the research with such novel events like the durbar.
Dr. Ansah indicated that the durbar was, therefore, to account to the Chiefs the liberties given them, what the Research Centre has done within the year, and their next step in the direction of their research work.
Dr. Victor Asola of the Biomedical Science Department, of the Navrongo Health Research Centre (NHRC), who gave an update on some key findings said the Centre has in collaboration with the Naval Medical Research Unit of the United States of America, the Walter Reed Army Institute for Medical Research (WRAIMR), and the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) set a robust system known as the Navrongo Integrated Surveillance Project (NISP) which helps them pick up signal of most disease early for study.
Dr. Asola indicated that early detection enables the center to screen repeatedly in order to determine the likelihood of any disease with the potential of becoming endemic and a pandemic and to report speedily to authorities to start putting measures in place to forestall any eventuality.