URN.The Mulago Hospital Acting Executive Director Dr. Rosemary Byanyima said that MUJHU comes in to fill the research gap as the hospital gets buried in a huge task of clinical care for patients.
Makerere University John-Hopkins University (MUJHU) has signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Mulago National Referral Hospital to allow researchers to access patients in the hospital to conduct studies on emerging health conditions.
Speaking at the signing event on Wednesday at Mulago, Makerere University John-Hopkins University (MUJHU) research collaboration Executive Director Prof. Phillipa Musoke said they have over time accessed over ten thousand patients seeking care in Mulago on a number of studies, many of which have generated data that has been translated into policy.
Musoke says that they are venturing out of HIV to do research on Tuberculosis, Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), maternal health, nutrition, and child health. She adds that they will study if giving measles vaccine to children earlier at six months than the current nine months offers better protection.
The Mulago hospital Acting Executive Director Dr. Rosemary Byanyima said that MUJHU comes in to fill the research gap as the hospital gets buried in a huge task of clinical care for patients.
She said the hospital is supposed to conduct research but they are many times constrained because of the small budget attached.
While she declined to reveal the amounts, Byanyima explained that they have instead constituted an experienced team of doctors to form the hospital research and ethics committee that vets what research can be conducted within the hospital and what significance the knowledge base gathered can add to patient care.
Dr. Musoke revealed that their studies are donor funded and can go for as much as a million dollars for a single study depending on the research question they are answering. She said their work can be quite expensive and many times their budgets are stretched when they have to ferry samples abroad when they can’t find appropriate labs in the country.
