Wellcome Trust supports research in Africa

Saturday, October 23, 2010

WELLCOME Trust, a UK-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) has donated five million pounds to research institutions in six West and East African countries to develop research careers for post doctoral scientists.
Countries to benefit from the funding which will spread over the next five years are Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, Chad, Uganda, and Tanzania. To ensure efficient use of the fund, scientists in those countries have formed a partnership known as Afrique One.
This was made known at a press briefing organised as part of the 3rd Planning and Evaluation Workshop organised by the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research in collaboration with “One Health” consortium.
The Consortium, funded by the Wellcome Trust (UK), aims to build a critical mass of sustainable local research and capacity across Africa, through strengthening African universities and research institutions and promoting the “One Health” concept.
The press briefing, according to the organisers was to build the capacity of media personnel on the One Health concept which is a co-operation between human and animal health to strengthen health systems.
In his remarks, the Head of Bacteriology Department of the Noguchi Memorial Institute on Medical Research, Dr Kwasi Addo, said many diseases which affected humans could be prevented if animal health was taken seriously.
He explained that many of the diseases which affected human beings had links with animals and so if animals were taken care of properly, they could be prevented from getting sick and cited cases such as mad cow disease, Avian Influenza (bird flu), rabies, and bovine TB.
Dr Addo touched on the need for effective collaboration between medical doctors and veterinary doctors to ensure effective disease prevention.
The Director of Afrique One, Professor Bassirou Bonfoh, indicated that the problem most African institutions faced was brain drain and therefore, made it difficult to build careers of African scientists at post doctoral level.
He expressed the hope that the Afrique One project would help many of the scientists on the continent to benefit from the development of the continent.
Professor Brian Perry of the Scientific Advisory Board, Afrique One Consortium, said the consortium had a mix of institutions and scientists from both Anglophone and Francophone Africa, who were now working together to raise the credibility of their organisations, of the science that they were engaged in and of human resources they were nurturing.
He explained that the training being offered by Wellcome Trust, will provide a fundamental basis to develop the capacity to manage and administer research funding.
For his part, Professor Jacob Zinsstag who was described as a northern partner, said Afrique One brought together seven public health, veterinary and wildlife institutions from West and East Africa to build up research capacity for the betterment of human and animal health as well as welfare adding that “A principal foundation of Afrique One’s work is to work closer between doctors, veterinarians and wildlife specialists”.