Atunse Healthcare Ltd. has been launched in Lagos with a commitment to manufacture and distribute advanced regenerative biologics in Nigeria, and to train the Nigerian scientists and clinicians those products require.
For a generation, the most advanced medicine available has been something Nigerians travelled for — if they could afford the journey. Atunse was established on the position that they should not have to, and that the capability to deliver and eventually produce such medicine belongs on the continent rather than at the end of an import chain.
The company is already treating patients across six service lines: aesthetic medicine, longevity and vitality, men’s wellness, women’s wellness, musculoskeletal support and neurological care.
Africa imports approximately 99% of the vaccines and more than 95% of the medicines it uses, producing under 1% of its own vaccine supply. The cost of that dependency is visible in Nigeria: an estimated US$2.39 billion left the country in 2024 with citizens seeking care abroad. The greater cost is borne by those who cannot travel, and for whom advanced treatment has simply not been an option.
Against this backdrop, the launch of Atunse Healthcare reflects a growing case for building the infrastructure, expertise and partnerships needed to strengthen Nigeria’s health sovereignty.
Speaking at the launch, Fatima Aliko Dangote, Group Executive Director of Commercial Operations for Oil & Gas, Dangote Industries, who represented the keynote speaker, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, GCON, Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Dangote Group, said the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the risks of relying heavily on external sources for essential health technologies.
“COVID-19 taught us a very important lesson: dependence is a vulnerability,” she said. “For us in Africa, medical sovereignty cannot just be a slogan. It is about building the capacity to protect our people.”
She described initiatives such as Atunse as important steps towards changing Africa’s position from being predominantly a consumer of advanced medicine to becoming a producer, noting that Nigeria has the talent, entrepreneurial energy and market needed to build that capability.
She added that the future of healthcare cannot be built by government or the private sector acting alone, but through partnerships that bring together policy, investment, science, enterprise and innovation.
Atunse Healthcare Ltd. is a partnership between KweHealth, LLC of the United States, which contributes an established scientific and manufacturing platform, and Tri-State Healthcare System of Nigeria, which contributes clinical delivery and institutional depth. The company is Nigerian-domiciled and Nigerian-based.
It is building four capabilities together rather than in sequence: clinical delivery through a treatment centre in Nigeria; advanced biomanufacturing, working towards cGMP-grade production of advanced biologics in Nigeria, with a roadmap extending to vaccines and, in time, cell and gene therapies; research and clinical translation, so that discovery and evidence generation take place in Africa and African patients are participants in the science rather than only recipients of its outputs; and regulatory capability, developed in active alignment with NAFDAC on the pathway for advanced biologic products.
Local manufacturing carries a workforce consequence the company treats as central rather than incidental. Biomanufacturing, quality assurance, regulatory science and clinical research are high-skill, durable roles, and Nigeria has few of them because it has had little to practise them on. Atunse’s position is that a country which manufactures without training its own scientists, and without governing its own standards, has substituted one dependency for another.
Prof. Akin Abayomi, Lagos State Commissioner for Health, who represented Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, at the event, emphasised the importance of building the specialist workforce needed to support the growth of advanced healthcare in Nigeria.
He said initiatives such as Atunse could help create the kind of environment capable of attracting experienced Nigerian doctors and scientists working abroad back home.
“When we start seeing initiatives like this, it starts to encourage our own experienced specialists to come back home,” Prof. Abayomi said. “This is the kind of initiative that is attractive to doctors and scientists doing great things abroad.”
He noted that regenerative medicine represents an important frontier for healthcare and stressed the need to build the institutions, skills, data infrastructure and systems required to take advantage of emerging opportunities.
“Government cannot do this alone,” he said. “We need the universities, the researchers, the healthcare providers and the private sector working together. Our role is to create the environment and the systems that allow that innovation to happen and, ultimately, improve the health of our people.”
Prof. Abayomi also highlighted the importance of data and digital infrastructure in developing a health system capable of responding to both current and future needs, noting the role of Lagos State’s Smart Health Information Platform (SHIP) in digitalising public health facilities and the opportunity for private-sector participation.
Atunse’s workforce ambition is therefore tied directly to its manufacturing and clinical ambitions. The company intends to build capability locally rather than simply establish another route for importing advanced products. The African Union has committed the continent to producing 60% of its own health products locally by 2040.
Atunse works with four investigational platforms developed and manufactured by KweHealth — AVEXO™, KH-1814™, AIOVA™ and NKIRA™. These are used only within approved regulatory and ethical frameworks and with informed consent. They are not approved for any indication, and the company makes no claim of safety or efficacy.
“For a generation, the most advanced medicine of our age has been something Africans travel for. Atunse exists to change the direction of that journey. We begin in Lagos, but what we are building is not for Lagos alone,” said Prof. Kamar T. Adeleke, President and Chairman, Atunse Healthcare Ltd.
Dr. Sola Oluwole, Chief Executive Officer, Atunse Healthcare Ltd., said the company’s ambition extends beyond keeping healthcare spending within Nigeria.
“What Nigeria loses is not only money. It is the demand, the capital and the clinical talent that need never have left. That is not a shortage of resources — it is an absence of capability. We intend to build it here: the treatment, the manufacturing, the distribution, and the people who will run all three.”
Dr. Frederick A. Kweh, Chief Science and Technology Officer, Atunse Healthcare Ltd., added: “Africa is not asking to be admitted to this field. It is joining it — as a manufacturer and as a clinical partner, working on the health problems this continent actually has.”
The launch brings together Atunse’s immediate clinical operations with its longer-term ambition to establish an African platform for advanced medicine — one that combines treatment, manufacturing, research, regulation and workforce development.
*ABOUT ATUNSE HEALTHCARE LTD.
Atunse Healthcare Ltd. is a Nigerian-domiciled, African-led company in regenerative medicine and advanced biologics — a partnership between KweHealth, LLC (United States) and Tri-State Healthcare System (Nigeria). It treats patients today across six service lines while building the manufacturing, research, and regulatory capability for Africa to produce its own advanced medicine.
Pronunciation: ah-TOON-shay. “Atunse” is Yoruba for to repair, to restore, to make whole again.
Corporate name: Atunse Healthcare Ltd. Informal use: Atunse Healthcare. Not “Atunse Health Center”.
Atunse’s platforms are signalling preparations derived from ethically donated perinatal tissue. They are not stem cell therapies in the conventional sense; the company’s stated principle is “signals, not cells”.
Media contact:
Dr. Sola Oluwole, MD, MPH
Chief Executive Officer
[email protected]
www.atunsehealth.com
