Kano foreign scholarship, blessings to the entire North
By Mustapha Muhammad
The Kano state government’s foreign scholarship program has been making significant progress and achieving its desired goals as the 1001 students keep returning in batches.
Among the recent graduates who excelled in their Master’s programmes, 54 students from India stood out, particularly in healthcare-related courses.
Notably, seven students specialised in Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), a course focused on reversing infertility. This expertise is especially valuable in the North, where no hospital currently offers this technique.
Through their postgraduate study in Embryology, the students transferred this technique from the prestigious Symbiosis International University, India, back to Kano State in Nigeria, with the intent of imparting more to the staff under the Obstetrics and Gynaecology department.
Strategically, the Kano state government, led by Governor Abba Yusuf, plans to deploy these newly trained health officials to the Muhammadu Abdullahi Wase Teaching Hospital’s Obstetrics and Gynaecology department to introduce Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). This pioneering initiative in the region aims to provide relief to many struggling with infertility in the North.
With this development, one can say that the foreign scholarship program of the Kano state government is a blessing not only to the indigenes of Kano alone but also to the entire North.
The Hospitals Management Board, led by Doctor Mansur Mudi Nagoda, is up and running to ensure that everything needed to start implementing the new ART technique is in place.
I have an insight into the ongoing preparations, including meetings between the Hospitals Management Board and the health officials who recently returned from India to Muhammadu Abdullahi Wase Teaching Hospital (MAWTH).
These discussions focus on identifying gaps and assessing needs—such as equipment and medication—to effectively launch Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) and address infertility.
The beauty of the knowledge transfer, particularly on this ART, is that more health personnel would learn how to do it, and it would keep spreading to a larger population within the obstetrics and gynaecology departments across the state and the entire northern states.
I was also hinted that the ART processes that cost above N3m would be sponsored by the State Governor, Alhaji Abba Yusuf. This means they will be free, like free maternal and postnatal care in the northwestern state of Kano. This is good news for all persons with infertility problems in Kano and the North.
No doubt, the state government’s gesture of free maternal and postnatal care reduces maternal and morbidity rates in Kano, and with the implementation of this new technique of ART, infertility will be reduced to the barest minimum.
This shows how the Abba Yusuf administration values human lives and development.
Once Assisted Reproductive Technology is implemented, infertility will no longer be a barrier to having children in Kano and the wider northern region. Hence, the Kano Foreign Scholarship is a blessing to the entire North.
*Mustapha Muhammad, Chief Press Secretary to the Kano State Governor, writes from the Ancient City of Kano.
