Expanding on the decade-long Vanderbilt-AKTH partnership, Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH), Bayero University Kano (BUK) in Kano, Nigeria, and the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH) are partnering on a new infrastructure development training program supported by the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The project will strengthen Nigeria's research administration and ethics infrastructure capacity.

Status epilepticus (SE) is the most common serious neurological emergency among children worldwide. In the low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) of sub-Saharan Africa, the burden of childhood SE-associated mortality and morbidity appears to be especially high. However, the phenotypes of childhood SE, clinical predictors of SE-associated mortality and of SE-associated neurodevelopmental morbidity, and genomic predictors of SE, SE-associated mortality and neurodevelopmental morbidity have not been well-characterized in this region.

Principal Investigator: Edwin Trevathan, MD, MPH

Principal Investigator(s): Muktar Aliyu, M.D., M.P.H., Dr.P.H.William Wester, M.D., M.P.H.

The primary objective is to implement a personalized approach to curative therapies for children and adults with sickle cell disease (SCD) to maximize benefits while minimizing adverse outcomes. Current efforts to understand long-term health outcomes after these therapies are limited. The focus on initial treatment success recalls developments in pediatric oncology during the 1980s, where effective therapies eventually led to increased risks of organ dysfunction and malignancies.