FUDMA student leads Africa’s team to global health competition

Ibrahim Adamu, a 200-level student of Federal University Dutsin-ma (FUDMA) is leading four other African students in the finals of the Innovate4Health Global Design Sprint in Switzerland.

The Microbiology undergraduate will lead the “Team KONIC”  to the competition to find solutions to Emerging Infectious Diseases.

According to a statement issued by FUDMA spokesman, Habib Umar-Amin, on Saturday in Katsina, four of the team members are from Nigeria and one from Ghana.

SOLACEBASE reports that the Team KONIC are Kenneth Chukwuebuka-Egwu, University of Nigeria Nsukka, Naomi Chinyere-Chikezie, University of Port Harcourt, Oluwaseun Aguda, Obafemi Awolowo University, and Clifford Yeboah-Duodu, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana.

“Adamu will be the team leader for the competition that was focused on bringing forward a new generation of innovators to address the challenges of emerging infectious diseases,” Umar-Amin said.

He said the design sprint is sponsored by ReAct–Action on Antibiotic Resistance, the International Federation of Medical Students Association, and the Innovation + Design Enabling (IDEA) Access Initiative of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“Team KONIC proposes the development and deployment of a mobile application to monitor the supply chain of antimicrobials in the food system in Northern Nigeria.

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“And educate farmers on AMR and sustainable farming practices through a user-friendly mobile SMARF App.

“The App will provide Unique Identification Numbers (UIN) to farmers, veterinarians, animal scientists, diagnostic laboratories and pharmaceutical stores.

“The SMARF App will contain details and contact information of all the veterinarians and animal scientists that are signed into it, and farmers can then navigate to this section to contact the professionals that are located closest to them.

“The SMARF App will also show prescribed drugs and laboratory results on the farmer’s profile and use the farmer’s UIN to ensure that pharmacists can only sell drugs upon validating their prescription,” Umar-Amin added.

He however said that the final, which was earlier scheduled to hold in Switzerland, would now be conducted via zoom, due to some logistical issues. (NAN).