Dr. I.C. Madubuike
Hon. Minister of Health
 
The present danger facing man as a result of blood transfusion has resulted in a rethinking and a change of attitude towards the practice of blood transfusion with a preference towards the use of autologous blood, which is the use of the patient’s own blood during surgery. It is a truism that the patient’s blood is the safest blood.

The need to adapt local available resources to produce devices that are relevant to our needs cannot therefore be overemphasised. The Federal Ministry of Health is doing all in its power to encourage local initiatives among medical personnel in the country having recognised the need to develop those aspects of our health care technology that are relevant to our climate of medical technology. This has greatly influenced the ministry’s support for the EATSET project. The level of local production of drugs has also increased as many pharmaceuticals have been discouraged from being mere importers of drugs, playing the role of medical representatives to their foreign partners    and so are mere packaging and distributive factories.

There is therefore an urgent need to integrate medicine with engineering and the analytical sciences in order to provide some outfit within the medical industry that can bridge the gap between equipment users and manufacturers. Such an outfit will also keep rcords of hazards that are encountered in the use of medical devices throughout the country and also seek to adapt foreign technologies to suit our mental and environmental conditions as exemplified in the design and production of the EATSET- Emergency Autologous Blood Transfusion Device which is a low cost and appropriate technology relevant to our needs. I understand that the equipment can be produced without involving the establishment of complex industrial machinery.


Dr. I.C. Madubuike
Hon. Minister of Health