Dr. Obinna Ekwunife from Nigeria will spend a year at the University of Bremen deepening his research on the topic of cervical cancer in his home country. He took up his research activities here at the beginning of the year. The expert on preventive medicine and trained health care economist will be working in a Cooperative Junior Research Group with the title “Evidence-Based Public Health”.

During his stay here he will carry out research both at the Leibniz Institute for Epidemiology and Prevention Research (BIPS) as well as at the Institute for Public Health and Prevention Research (ipp).
Before coming to Bremen, the guest researcher from Nigeria was awarded the Georg Forster Research Scholarship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Ekwunife’s research interest lies in the comparative costs of the prevention and therapy of cervical cancer, or more precisely: The “Cost effectiveness analysis of primary prevention against secondary prevention of cervical cancer in Nigeria”. This cancer is widespread in West Africa, some 8,000 women dying from it every year in Nigeria alone. Dr. Ekwunife chose the Cooperative Junior Research Group led by Prof. Stefan K. Lhachimi as the location for his research stay in Germany.

This group, which is supported with funds from the Excellence Initiative, carries out systematic analysis of controlled studies on health protection. Both the theoretical as well as the methodological approach adopted by Ekwunife fit extremely well with the topics pursued by other researchers in the group. The 34-year-old Nigerian is immensely looking forward to working with the research group in Bremen and to making many “rewarding scientific experiences” in the months ahead. “The University of Bremen has built up an enviable international reputation in the field of public health”, he says.