AFRO-NETS> New move to boost African health research

[Dieter Neuvians MD <neuvians@mweb.co.za>]

New move to boost African health research
----------------------------------------- 
James Njoroge 

Source: http://www.scidev.net/
Date posted: 13 Nov 2002

[ARUSHA, Tanzania] A new organisation to promote health research in 
Africa and strengthen the continent's voice in setting and implement-
ing the global research agenda was launched today. 

The initiative  known as the African Health Research Forum  seeks 
to develop leadership in health researchers and health institutions 
in Africa. It also aims to improve the communication of health re-
search findings to the public, by creating websites and scientific 
journals, and by training science communicators. 

Tanzania's minister for health, Anna Abdalla, who officially launched 
the Forum at the annual conference of the Geneva-based Global Forum 
for Health Research in Arusha, Tanzania, said that Africa should 
claim ownership of health research programmes being undertaken in the 
continent. 

"African governments should support African health research," she 
said. "They must show support and commitment. We have been eating 
other people's research findings." 

The Forum  to be headed by Raphael Owor, president of the Uganda Na-
tional Health Research Forum  will also promote collaborations with 
research bodies from the North, as well as training researchers, in-
stitutions and the public in research ethics. 

Mohammed Said Abdullah, treasurer of the National Health Research and 
Development Centre of Kenya and a key player in creating the Forum, 
said the initiative would empower African health researchers to chal-
lenge the North on issues such as who owns research. "International 
codes of research ethics and rules will be designed to enhance under-
standing of such collaboration," he said. 

According to Abdullah, the initiative will be formally presented to 
Africa's health ministers at a meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe, in March. 
"[The ministers] will be asked to lobby the Africa Union to set up a 
health research desk in its administrative structure," he said. "We 
want governments in this continent to put a certain amount of money 
to health research through the African Union". 

The Forum's spirit stems from the findings of a report published in 
1990 by the Commission on Health Research for Development, which re-
vealed that the bulk of health research resources do not benefit poor 
countries, which shoulder the heaviest disease burden in the world. 

The report, Health Research: Essential Link to Equity in Development, 
observed that while 80 per cent of the global population living in 
developing countries shouldered 95 per cent of the global burden of 
disease, only 5 per cent of global investment in health research was 
committed to health problems in developing countries. 

"Current statistics indicate that out of the annual global health re-
search budget estimated as US$ 70 billion, less than 10 per cent goes 
to countries which shoulder 90 per cent of the global disease bur-
den," said Ali Mohammed Shein, Tanzania's Vice-President, at the of-
ficial opening of the conference yesterday (November 12). 

Hailing the creation of the Forum, Shein said that research efforts 
would have more impact if nations and regional groupings could create 
better functional networks and other mechanisms for concerted action. 
"The creation of these mechanisms will go a long way in ensuring that 
the voice of individual countries and regional entities is heard loud 
and clear at the global level and allowed to take part in shaping the 
global health research agenda," he said. 

In the absence of such a forum, Africa would find it difficult to in-
fluence the global health research agenda, to define and defend Afri-
can health research priorities and to fight for an equitable share of 
the global resources, he said. 

Richard Feachem, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, 
Tuberculosis & Malaria, appealed to African governments to give more 
support to health research. "[The African Health Research Forum] is 
an excellent idea to bring together African health researchers into a 
new grouping to set agenda for Africa health research  I support 
it," he said. "Leadership in health research must come from within 
Africa. This Forum is the key to agenda setting and seizing the 
agenda." 

© SciDev.Net 2002

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