Lucky Obukohwo, Reporting
Six staff of the Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital (ISTH) have been Trained on Metagenomic Sequence to strengthen the hospital’s capacity and provide accurate analytical results.
Truth Live News reports that Metagenomics is the study of genetic material recovered directly from environmental or clinical samples by sequencing.
The broad field may also be called environmental genomics, ecogenomics, community genomics or microbiomics.
The hospital’s Acting Chief Medical Director (CMD), Reuben Agbonyosoria Eifediyi, disclosed this to Truth Live News while speaking on some signs of progress recorded under his stewardship.
According to him, “Six ISTH scientific staff were trained on metagenomic sequencing in the past months (theory, benchwork and bioinformatic (analysis), including attendance to two workshops at the Laboratoire des Fièvres Hémorragiques Virales de Guinée (LFHVG) in Conakry, Guinea (Figure 1)”.
While reeling out the benefits of the training, Prof. Eifediyi said the Metagenomic sequencing (MinlON technology, Oxford Nanopore), bioinformatic analyses, production of consensus sequences and generation of phylogenetic trees were independently performed by ISTH-laboratory trained staff as a result of the training.
He added that the staff independently sequenced and analyzed four Lassa virus-positive samples, collected between states, in Nigeria.
He maintained that the overview of the training activities, as part of the programme, two on-site trainings of laboratory staff from ISTH have taken place in early 2023 in Conakry, Guinea, to allow for the successful implementation and independent management of metagenomic sequencing at ISTH.
The Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology who is currently gunning for the position of the substantive Chief Medical Director (CMD) of the hospital, reiterated that when he eventually becomes the CMD, more staff of the hospital will be exposed to more training within and outside the shore of the country to enable them to be proficient in their work.
Friends of the hospital who preferred anonymity described the news of the training as a welcome development, saying that a CMD that can think outside the box is what ISTH needs and which they have found in the person of Eifediyi.
They said that with him at the helm of affairs, the hospital stands to gain a lot, adding that Eifediyi has proven beyond reasonable doubt that he has all it takes to move the hospital forward if given the chance.