The Auditor General’s report for the year ending 2020 has revealed that the Noguchi Memorial Institute and Medical Research (NMIMR) did not have a funding strategy or dedicated research reserve to provide underlying financial resources to undertake research activities for effective structural transformation of our socio-economic environment except over reliance on the benevolence from development partners.
The report therefore recommended that Management should establish a research fund to provide sustainable dedicated resources towards research activities.
“We noted that an amount of GH¢1,152,819.00 was advanced to various Officers at NMIMR upon request to undertake a number of activities remained unretired as at the end of 2018.
“We therefore recommended that, Management should establish clear timelines for the retirement of imprest and failure should warrant the withholding of the imprest amount from the affected staffs’ salary.
“Again, Management should ensure that the outstanding amount of GH¢1,152,819.00 are recovered from the respective officers.
“We noted that NMIMR did not have an International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) accreditation to be able to perform laboratory studies in conducting research into communicable and noncommunicable diseases and provide high end laboratory diagnostic, monitoring and surveillance services in support of national public health public relations.
“Hence, NMIMR continuous to rely on services of other vendors to perform diagnostic and laboratory studies.
|We recommended that Management should ensure that NMIMR take steps to obtain the requisite ISO accreditation and engage a diagnostic expert to provide such services internally.
“We noted that NMIMR did not have a funding strategy or dedicated research reserve to provide underlying financial resources to undertake research activities for effective structural transformation of our socio-economic environment except over reliance on the benevolence from development partners.”
NMIMR was set up in 1979 as a semi-autonomous institute of the University is the leading biomedical research facility in Ghana.
The Institute is the result of joint efforts by Prof. E. O. Easmon, former Dean of the University of Ghana Medical School, Prof. Kenji Honda of Fukushima Medical School in Japan and the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA).
It was built by the Government of Japan and donated to the Government and people of Ghana in honour of the distinguished Japanese researcher Dr. Hideyo Noguchi, who researched into yellow fever in Ghana and died from the disease in the country in 1928.
