Key African countries 'not keeping health research
promises'
[BAMAKO] Several key African countries have done "very little" to invest
in health research since pledging to do so at a world meeting of health and
science ministers in Mexico four years ago, say critics.
But others — including Tanzania, Rwanda and Mali — have made significant
progress in investing in their health research.
Basic statistical information is missing in many countries, technical
knowledge is poor and there is a gap between the producers of knowledge and
the policymakers who need it, speakers said at the Global Ministerial Forum
on Research for Health in Bamako, Mali (16 November).
''For Nigeria — and for many other countries — we don't know how many
deaths there are and we don't know the causes of those deaths," said Timothy
Evans, assistant director-general of the WHO.
Carel Ijsselmuiden, the director of the Swiss-based non-profit Council on
Health Research for Development (COHRED), also cited Nigeria as an example
of a country that had done ''very little'' since the government attended the
2004 meeting. And Phillip Agomo, acting director-general of the Nigerian
Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), conceded that Nigeria has moved more
slowly than it would have liked in health research.
''To do research is difficult in Nigeria,'' Agomo said, due to poor
infrastructure, a shortage of technical knowledge, and ''un-cooperative
research participants". He called for the recruitment of ''people who are
focused, who have the ability to learn and can design research methods that
can work".
Pat Naidoo of Canada's International Development and Research Centre (IDRC),
which is funding health research projects in the Nigerian states of Cross
River and Bauchi said: ''The challenge remains to close the knowledge gap,
translating knowledge so that policy makers can understand it. From the
projects we are working on in Nigeria, we know Nigeria is not yet at this
stage.''
In contrast Mali, where the conference is taking place, was praised for
being ''on the right track''.
Mali's policy of equitable health care was a ''marker of good governance'',
said Luis Sambo, the former vice-minister of health for Angola and current
African director for the World Health Organization, (WHO).
The governments of Rwanda and Tanzania were also praised -- for investing in
their own health research. Along with Uganda, they have developed systematic
ways to collect the kind of information that would enable them to identify
their own research priorities, said Naidoo.
But Uganda's problems were also highlighted. It lacks even a list of health
research priorities, said Ijsselmuiden, who is also a member of the South
African Research Ethics Training Initiative (SARETI). He told a press
conference that there is no formal health research policy in Uganda, and no
director of research in the health ministry.
Meanwhile many developing countries complained that donor agencies are
setting the health priorities in the developing world.
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