By Sade Adewale, Ondo

|

The Vice Chancellor of University of Medical Sciences, Ondo, Prof Adesegun Fatusi has said that the school has identified five strategic pillars for advancing the academic mission of the university and its positioning within the national and regional settings.
Fatusi stated this during the official commissioning of the Molecular Biology Laboratory of the University.
The VC said that the first pillar which is public health, aimed to pioneer a new agenda in public health workforce development through the new School of the Public Health.
He added that the second pillar is Herbal Medicine and Drug production,” where we hope to use power of science to unleash the potential of our- God given plants and thereby drive drug discovery.
According to him, the third pillar is medical rehabilitation: “already, the university has set the record of establishing the first faculty of medical rehabilitation in Nigeria and West Africa in line with the goal of being the leading centre of medical rehabilitation and related care in West Africa.
The Vice Chancellor stated that the fourth strategic pillar is health professions education. To advance the scientific understanding and practice of teaching and learning as well as strengthening the teaching capacity and competencies of teachers across health professions, adding that the institution recently established a centre for excellence in health professions education.
He noted that the centre aims to be the leading institutional platform for the development of health professions education in West Africa and lead the future transformation of the health workforce development agenda in the region.
The fifth pillar is the reason we are here now: Molecular Bioscience. The Molecular Biology Laboratory we are commissioning is a key facility in the vision to utilise molecular Bioscience to drive health research and training as well as boost quality health care delivery.
According to him, the newly established centre for Molecular Bioscience and Medical Genomics, approved by the university senate on 5th November 2020, aims to be a Centre of Excellence that inspires the next generation of Scientists and physicians, through collaborative research and training in molecular biology, biochemistry, bioinformatics, genetics, molecular medicine, genomic technologies, nanobiotechnology, statistics and epidemiology, to increase understanding, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of human diseases”.
The VC added that the new molecular biology laboratory will facilitate the diagnosis of COVID-19, Lassa fever, and several other deadly infections. The facilities in the laboratory will complement other equipment we have competitively won from seeding laboratory, USA, and more recently from the cancer control initiative.
Fatusi further said that these facilities will also drive the use of molecular genomic techniques to better understand and address the challenges of diseases like cancer and diabetes as well as diagnose genetic disorders and provide DNA paternity testing.