TMDU Delegation Visits NMIMR

A group picture of Participants after the seminar

At its institutional seminar yesterday, 21st October 2016, the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) hosted the six-member delegation from the Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU).

In his address, the Provost of the College of Health Sciences and Chairperson of the seminar, Rev. Professor P.F Ayeh-Kumi recalled the decade-long relationship between the two institutions, and noted that their interaction had raised the international profiles of the universities. His Excellency Kaoru Yoshimura, the Japanese Ambassador to Ghana, also commended the bond between the countries and, especially, the initiative to support the efforts of the NMIMR with the establishment of an advanced research centre for infectious diseases.

On his part, the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Ebenezer Oduro Owusu, pointed out that the increasing rates of infectious diseases, which is compounded by drug-resistant pathogen strains, is worrying. The Vice Chancellor commended the NMIMR’s critical role in the fight against Ebola in West Africa, as recorded by the 2014 World Health Organization. He added that the completion of the advanced research centre in 2018 would add to the progress NMIMR had made. TMDU’s support in the form of student exchanges and post-graduate programmes had been invaluable to NMIMR, according to the Vice Chancellor.

Professor Kwadwo Koram gave an overview of the NMIMR-TMDU collaboration, and the AMED TMDU-NMIMR Project which is structured around the three research themes of ‘Diarrheal diseases,’ ‘Dengue and Chikungunya,’ and ‘Drug based on medicinal plants.’ The NMIMR, he said, is hoping to develop new monitoring tools for drug-resistant pathogens, create new therapeutic interventions, gather genomic information on specific pathogens, and develop pathogen-risk maps, among others.

In his closing remarks, Professor Koram explained NMIMR’s plan to have seven research laboratories, allowing researchers from UG and TMDU to collaborate on a diverse range of research areas while simultaneously extending NMIMR’s scope of research to cover more non-infectious diseases such as cancer.