Since 2018 a hospital partnership between the University Medicine Greifswald, Institute of Transfusion Medicine, and the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Department of Hematology, in Kano, Nigeria has been established. The partnership started based on a personal meeting of two people – Professor Aisha Kuliya Gwarzo and Professor Andreas Greinacher in 2015 – and became a collaboration between the Bayero University in Kano and the medical faculty of the University in Greifswald.
Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH; established 1996) is a 700-bed teaching hospital for undergraduate and postgraduate training of health professionals of Bayero University, Kano, and resident fellows of the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria and the West African Postgraduate Medical College. Kano is the largest city in Northwestern Nigeria region, with a population of over 3 million. AKTH serves as a referral center mainly for the states in this region (total catchment area of 40 million).
The main target of this partnership is to improve blood supply for medical care in Kano but also to enroll the improvements to the whole country.
The hospital partnership projects are funded by the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. They are commissioned and financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and co-financed by the Else Kröner-Fresenius Foundation (EKFS) and the Else Kröner Fresenius Stiftung (EKFS).
We proudly present some of the milestones of this hospital partnership and the close interaction with the colleagues of the department of hematology and transfusion medicine in Kano:
2016 - two physicians from Nigeria – Dr Dalhat Gwarzo (Kano, Nigeria) and Dr Angela Ugwu (Enugu, Nigeria) visited the transfusion medicine laboratory in Greifswald for 3 months.
2018-2021 – grant application and approval for a 2-years project 2019-2021: “Safe blood for Kano”: Visit by Greifswald experts in Kano (2017, 2018, 2019) performing site audits, providing teaching sessions and lectures, improving the blood bank infrastructure, starting development of diagnostic assays for red cell antibody screening and extended Rhesus blood group typing beside ABD blood group typing and crossmatching.
2020-2023 – grant application and approval for the next 2-years project 2021-2023: “Safe blood for Kano”: analysis of the blood donor database at AKTH, conducting online training on SOPs for the blood bank and immunohematology laboratory, establishing a communication channel between the 10 hospitals in Kano using internet technology (WhatsApp Group) to facilitate exchange of blood among the participating hospitals.
2022 - 1st International Conference of Hospital Partnerships Berlin, Oct 14th-15th 2022, followed by a visit of the donor clinic and the immunohematology laboratory of the University Medicine Greifswald (from left to right: Kabiru Sulaiman, Professor Andreas Greinacher, Professor Aisha Kuliya Gwarzo, Dr Kathleen Selleng and Dr Dalhat Gwarzo). During this visit the “Memorandum of Understanding” between the two Universities were signed.
2022-2025 – grant application and approval for the ACADEMIC funding line of GIZ for a cross-sectional and longitudinal population-based study on blood donor and transfusion recipient characteristics in Northern Nigeria (including 10 hospitals in Kano).
2022-2025 - grant application and approval for the next 2-years project 2023-2025: “Safe blood for Kano”: we will establish the capacity for red blood cell antibody differentiation and the capacity to produce the required laboratory test reagents in Kano independent of pharmaceutical/diagnostica industry. This project is carried out by Dr Halima Ismail from AKTH Kano. She is funded by the American Society of Hematology (ASH) for a training visit in Greifswald from September to November 2023. She started blood group genotyping from blood type O donors of AKTH staff. These donors will be long term available to donate reagent test cells for antibody screening and differentiation in multitransfused patients.
Also visit ashclinicalnews.org, July 2023: Blood beyond borders:
ASH VTP Helps Enable Sustainable Growth in Nigerian Blood Transfusion Service
