Since 2018 a hospital partnership between the University Medicine Greifswald, Institute of Transfusion Medicine, and the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Department of Hematology, in Kano, Nigeria has been established. The partnership started based on a personal meeting of Professor Aisha Kuliya Gwarzo and Professor Andreas Greinacher in 2015 – and became a collaboration between the Bayero University in Kano and the medical faculty of the University in Greifswald.
Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH; established 1996) is a 700-bed teaching hospital for undergraduate and postgraduate training of health professionals of Bayero University, Kano, and resident fellows of the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria and the West African Postgraduate Medical College. Kano is the largest city in Northwestern Nigeria region, with a population of over 3 million. AKTH serves as a referral center mainly for the states in this region (total catchment area of 40 million).
The main target of this partnership is to improve blood supply for medical care in Kano but also to
roll-out the improvements to the whole country.
The hospital partnership projects are funded by the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. They are commissioned and financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and co-financed by the Else Kröner-Fresenius Foundation (EKFS). The Else Kröner Fresenius Stiftung (EKFS) is now supporting the roll-out of the achievements to the entire country.
We proudly present some of the milestones of this hospital partnership and the close interaction with the colleagues of the department of hematology and transfusion medicine in Kano:
2016 - two physicians from Nigeria – Dr Dalhat Gwarzo (Kano, Nigeria) and Dr Angela Ugwu (Enugu, Nigeria) visited the transfusion medicine laboratory in Greifswald for 3 months.
2018-2021 – approval for a 2-years project 2019-2021: “Safe blood for Kano”: Visit by Greifswald experts in Kano (2017, 2018, 2019) performing site audits, providing teaching sessions and lectures, improving the blood bank infrastructure, starting development of diagnostic assays for red cell antibody screening and extended Rhesus blood group typing beside ABD blood group typing and crossmatching.
2020-2023 – approval for the next 2-years project 2021-2023: “Safe blood for Kano”: analysis of the blood donor database at AKTH, conducting online training on SOPs for the blood bank and immunohematology laboratory, establishing a communication channel between the 10 hospitals in Kano using internet technology (WhatsApp Group) to facilitate exchange of blood among the participating hospitals.
2022 - 1st International Conference of Hospital Partnerships Berlin, Oct 14th-15th 2022. The “Memorandum of Understanding” between the Universitys Greifswald and the Bayero University Kano was signed.
2022-2025 – ACADEMIC funding line of GIZ for a cross-sectional and longitudinal population-based study on blood donor and transfusion recipient characteristics in Northern Nigeria (including 10 hospitals in Kano). More than 60.000 blood donations and 50.000 blood transfusion data were documented. Data collection is finalized (August 2025), assessment is ongoing.
2022-2025 - Hospital partnership GLOBAL grant: “Safe blood for Kano” Red blood cell antibody differentiation and producing the required laboratory test reagents in Kano independent from international pharmaceutical/diagnostica industries was established. This project was carried out by Dr Halima Ismail from AKTH Kano. She was funded by the American Society of Hematology (ASH) for a training visit in Greifswald from September to November 2023. She started blood group genotyping of blood type O donors of AKTH staff. These donors will be long term available to donate reagent test cells for antibody screening and differentiation in multitransfused patients. The results were presented in Nigeria at the annual conference of the Nigerian Society of Haematology and Blood Transfusion (NSHBT) and of the German Society of Transfusion Medicine and Hemotherapy (DGTI)
2025-2027 - Hospital partnership GLOBAL grant:” Safe Blood for Kano – The next step is to share with other hospitals”. We roll out our achievements at AKTH and introduce basic hygiene principles in 8 additional hospitals covering the population of the Kano metropolitan area. We focus on improved skin disinfection before blood donation, abandon storage and re-use of opened blood bags for consecutive paediatric aliquot blood transfusion; improve maintenance of blood bank fridges, and temperature monitoring. We establish pre-transfusion IAT (indirect anti-human globulin test) crossmatch in all hospitals and enhance documentation for blood traceability.
2025-2028 – funding by the Else-Kröner-Fresenius Foundation: “Towards Safe Blood in Nigeria”. The objectives of the project are: 1. To establish the prototype of a national training center for transfusion medicine at AKTH providing target group adjusted training, which can later be copied to other Nigerian university hospitals; 2. To establish a training center for blood bank and donor clinic auditors and to generate a pool of examiners/auditors (30 auditors trained) who will support and strengthen the NBSA in auditing of blood banks and transfusion medicine centers to ensure the sustainability of the introduced changes.
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