Friday, 3 July 2009
The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) is delighted
to have been chosen to provide support for a number of African institutions
participating in a research capacity strengthening initiative made possible
thanks to a £30 million grant from the Wellcome Trust.
LSHTM will support four out of a total of seven new international and
pan-African consortia - each led by an African institution - being funded
through the African institutions Initiative, which is is aimed at developing
institutional capacity to support and conduct health-related research
vital to enhancing people's health, lives and livelihoods. The initiative
aims to bring teaching, service commitment and research together to
develop the next generation of African researchers, and to create an
environment which enables African universities to become more involved
in health research in Africa. It brings together more than 50 institutions
from 18 African countries.
The initiative is innovative in that African institutions and academics
will be heading up the consortia, and driving the agenda forward, at
a time when existing research capacity strengthening programmes and
collaborative partnerships tend to be led by northern research institutions.
While each of the consortia operates independently and sets its own
agenda, certain activities are common to most, including leadership
training and professional development, PhD and postdoctoral fellowships,
improved infrastructure, competitive grant schemes and the provision
of up-to-date equipment.
LSHTM will support four of the consortia:
- The THRiVE consortium, led by Makerere University, Uganda which
will assist African universities to become platforms that can sustainably
support internationally competitive scientific research, and which
will also provide undergraduate fellowships to talented individuals;
- SACIDS (The Southern African Centre for Infectious Disease Surveillance),
led by Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania, which will link
medical and veterinary institutions from five African countries and
the UK to target human and animal diseases in Africa and improve the
capacity of African institutions to detect, identify and monitor infectious
diseases affecting humans and animals, including new infectious human
diseases of animal origin;
- The Southern Africa Consortium for Research Excellence (SACORE), led
by Malawi College of Medicine, which will develop a vibrant, sustainable
research culture in participating southern African institutions by building
a critical mass of research scientists in these institutions, developing
strong leadership in research, setting up attractive career pathways
and developing comprehensive research management and support systems;
- The African SNOWS (Strengthening Research Capacity in Environmental
Health) Consortium led by the University of Science & Technology
in Kumasi, Ghana which will develop interdisciplinary research capacity
in environmental health, a relatively new area for the Wellcome Trust's
support. The Universities of Copenhagen and of East Anglia will work
alongside LSHTM to provide short courses and other forms of training
for researchers in six African universities.
Professor Hazel Dockrell, Deputy Director (Research) at the London School
of Hygiene & Tropical Medical has comments: 'We are delighted that
the Wellcome Trust has funded this new initiative to strengthen research
capacity in Africa. This initiative will provide much needed resources
to build on the capacity strengthening provided by research projects.
Through the four consortia in which we are a partner, we look forward
to working with our partners to enable African research to have a greater
impact on health'.
For further information please contact the London School of Hygiene
& Tropical Medicine Press Office on +44 (0) 207 927 2073/2802 or
the Wellcome Trust Press Office on +44 (0)20 7611 7329.
For further news story please see
LIDC's SACIDS story.
Ends
|
