From Agaju Madugba, Katsina
A 200 level student from the Department of Micro- Biology, Federal University Dutsin-Ma (FUDMA), Ibrahim Adamu, is leading a group five students (Team KONIC) from universities in Nigeria and Ghana to the finals of the 2022 Global Student Design Sprint competition, to tackle emerging infectious diseases.
The Team KONIC were among the finalists selected for the Innovate4Health Global Design Sprint to bring forward a new generation of innovators to address the challenges of emerging infectious diseases.
A press statement on Saturday by the FUDMA Public Relations Officer, Habibu Umar Aminu, named other members of the team as Kenneth Chukwuebuka Egwu (University of Nigeria), Naomi Chinyere Chikezie (University of Port Harcourt), Oluwaseun Aguda (Obafemi Awolowo University) and Clifford Yeboah Duodu
(Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana).
The statement explained that the Team KONIC’s project focuses on a mobile application to monitor the supply chain of antimicrobials in the food system.
“The design sprint is sponsored by ReAct – Action on Antibiotic Resistance, the International Federation of Medical Students Association, and the Innovation + Design Enabling (IDEA) Access Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“Team KONIC proposes the development and deployment of a mobile application to monitor the supply chain of antimicrobials in the food system in Northern Nigeria, and educate farmers on AMR and sustainable farming practices through a user-friendly mobile SMARF App.
“The App will provide Unique Identification Numbers (UIN) to farmers, veterinarians, animal scientists, diagnostic laboratories and pharmaceutical stores.
“The SMARF App will contain details and contact information of all the veterinarians and animal scientists
that are signed into it, and farmers can then navigate to this section to contact the professionals that are located closest to them.
“The SMARF App will also show prescribed drugs and laboratory results on the farmer’s profile and uses the farmers’ UIN to ensure that pharmacists only sell drugs upon validating their prescription.
“The innovation will ensure that antimicrobials are only sold to farmers who genuinely need them which will reduce the arbitrary use of antimicrobials.”