Challenges facing National Health Research Systems in the WHO African Region

Abstract

Many countries in the African region do not have functional national health research
systems (NHRS) that generate, disseminate, uses, and archives health-related
knowledge/ideas in published form (hard, electronic or audio forms). In such countries,
death of each modern or traditional health practitioner constitutes a permanent loss of a
library of knowledge, ideas, innovations and inventions. The WHO African Advisory
Committee on Health Research and Development (AACHRD) has attributed the fragility
of NHRS in the Region to poor environment for research, inadequate manpower,
inadequate infrastructures and facilities, inaccessibility to modern technology, and lack
of funds. The weak and uncoordinated NHRS partly explain the poor overall
performance of majority of national health systems in the Region. Continued fragility of
NHRS can be attributed to lack of implementation of the WHO Regional Committee for
Africa and the World Health Assembly resolutions on health research. This paper urges
African countries, to fully implement the contents of those resolutions, for substantive
health research outputs to share with the rest of the world at the next Ministerial
Summit on Research for Health, which will take place in the African Region in 2008.

African Journal of Health Sciences Vol. 14 (3-4) 2007: pp. 100-103