My name is Esther Gani and I had my ARISE secondment experience at the FGB Italy from January 2024 to March 2024. During my secondment program, I worked on work package 7, which involved information and communication to disseminate information about sickle cell disease.
My focus was to develop very interesting and attractive graphics for a booklet Titled “Living Well with Sickle Cell Disease: Questions and Answers for Patients’ Parents/Caregivers, Families/ Relatives, And Public”. Thus, the secondment offered me the rare opportunity to interact with renowned experts like Prof. Adriana Ceci, Prof. Bonadies and Maria Carovado who led the process. I appreciate your guidance.
On behalf of the International Hemoglobinopathy Research Network (INHERENT), I worked with Antonella Didio, Viviana Giannuzzi, Natasha Archer, Emmanuel Peprah, Petros Kountouris and Fedele Bonifazi to develop a manuscript titled “Ethical and regulatory requirements for conducting researcher-2 driven large-scale multi-national genetic hematological studies: 3 the INHERENT experience” which is at the publishing level now. I am sincerely thankful to the team because the manuscript development process exposed me to knowledge from the expertise displayed by each member.
More so, being guided by Dr. Antonella Didio, I developed a piece of news on gene therapy which was published on the ARISE website. Earlier before now, I had little knowledge about what gene therapy is. The news development process was an eye-opener for me to understand what gene therapy is, how it works and some challenges faced in sub-Saharan African countries, particularly Nigeria.
The opportunity to attend virtual trainings and conferences was amazing. The training on REDcap by Petrous from Greece enabled to gain an insight on electronic record, data collection and ethical issues on health data. An interesting virtual conference titled “12th Accelerate Paediatric Oncology Annual Conference” 8-9th February, 2024 and a workshop on “Engaging with European data space: The pediatrics perspective” 19th-20th February 2024 were other activities I participated in which exposed me to the knowing more about genetic diseases and data management.
Another achievement during this secondment is getting registered as a member of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (e-COST) which is a working group of the Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship (HELIOs) international working group. e-COST Actions is a four-year interdisciplinary research network open to researchers from various backgrounds, fostering collaboration across academia, SMEs, public institutions, and other relevant organizations to investigate topics of choice across all science and technology fields, offering an inclusive pan-European environment for career growth and professional networking.
My deep appreciation goes to Mr. Fedele Duccio and Prof Baba Inusa for the secondment opportunity. My entire stay wouldn’t have been successful without the support and guidance of Serena, Lucia, Annalisa, Antonella, and Viviana. I also appreciate Mr. Franco Bartoloni who was always forthcoming and gave tips on how to adapt to the reality of Bari. I must not forget to acknowledge Nunzia, Kyeara, Silvia, and Cynthia, whose reassuring words kept me going. I wish to show my profound appreciation to other secondees from Nigeria and Kenya Abubakar, Simeon, Rose, and Njele, and all the other staff who made my stay memorable.
I sincerely thank the Vice chancellor of Kaduna State University (KASU) Prof Abdullahi I Musa and the University Librarian Dr. Babangida Umar Dangani for their mentorship and support. To all staff of KASU library, I say a BIG THANK YOU for their understanding and covering my duty while I was away in Italy. I also appreciate the ARISE school program team in Kaduna for their support.
