March 2, 2017 By Joseph S. Margai
Project 1808, non-profit making organisation founded by a Sierra Leonean US-based scientist, Dr. AlhajiN’jai, is putting modalities in place to prevent any disease outbreak in Sierra Leone.
It could be recalled that the country was over the years hit by two big disease outbreaks-cholera and Ebola and the memories of the later still lingers in the minds of many Sierra Leoneans.
Dr. N’jai informed this medium in an interview on Wednesday that his organisation would soon come up with community health checks and disease surveillance programs in Makeni and Freetown.
“Project 1808 is partnering with SONY Corporation, University of Tokyo and University of Wisconsin Madison to organise large big screen movie for public viewing and health surveillance checks at the same time for communities in Sierra Leone. The program is called “Wellbodinafo check am Sierra Leone,” he said.
Asked why the program would only focus on Freetown and Makeni, he said they were engaging the two communities because they recorded high number of Ebola survivors.
He disclosed that the program is funded by Asia- Pacific Alliance for disaster management (A-PAD).
This is not the first time Dr. AlhajiN’jai has been supporting the country. During the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, he brought three of the world’s known scientists to find a way to eliminate the disease.
As a Research Fellow at the Department of Pathological Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, he has been discussing Ebola and its contributing factors in West Africa on The Progressive.
N’jai argues that while Ebola is a very deadly disease, the real circumstances behind its dramatic outbreak in West Africa have more to do with poor healthcare, weak education systems and a general lack of sustainable development.
His research work has been focused on toxicology, genomics, immunology, stem cell biology and systems biology.