Infectious Diseases Kill More Poor People Annually

Normal
0
false
false
false
EN-US
X-NONE
X-NONE

Infectious diseases of poverty (IDPs) thrive where poverty exists. They are contagious and mostly prevalent in poor countries. They include malaria, tuberculosis, HIV AIDS and diarrhoeal diseases. Together, diseases of poverty kill approximately 14 million people annually, mostly in poor countries, while HIV and AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, which are the three primary poverty-related diseases account for 10 per cent of the global mortality of these diseases.

Infectious diseases of poverty (IDP) have persisted and posed a challenge for most public health systems in developing country, in spite of scientific and technological developments. A significant reason for this has been the lack of research capacity, in particular, interdisciplinary capacity that can integrate knowledge and facilitate the identification and translation of technical solutions into interventions for public health systems and populations.

The challenge has resulted in collaborative initiatives for concerted efforts at tackling problems.

One such initiative is the Institute of Infectious Diseases of Poverty (IIDP). IIDP, (or Institut de Recherche sur les Maladies de la Pauvrete, IRMP), is a group of Aglophone and Francophone multidisciplinary West African Institution with the goal of developing the knowledge, the skills, the right methods and processes in tackling the challenges of IDPs. The IIDP/IRMP also aims at supporting the right calibre of expertise and mobilising the resources within an interdisciplinary science environment in addressing the challenge of IDPs.

In keeping with its aims, the first ever Foundation Workshop and Supervisors’ training was held in Accra from August 27 to September 1, 2012, to focus on interdisciplinary research into the control of infectious diseases of poverty.

The course brought together about 30 PhD students in universities from Ghana, Mali, Abidjan and Nigeria. Apart from interacting with colleagues and sharing experiences from different perspectives, the students had the opportunity of acquiring skills in tackling IDPs from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Opening the course, a director of IIDP, Dr Margaret Gyapong, gave an account of how the IIDP begun.

She said early in 2008, the Wellcome Trust, an organisation in the United Kingdom focussing on health research, put out a call with the aim of building a critical mass of sustainable local research capacity across Africa through the strengthening of universities and research institutions in IPDs. Later the same year, the IIPD, together with its partners came together to respond to the call, and were selected with seven other consortia to receive an initial five year funding from the Trust.

She said IIDP had decided, with its share of the grant, to focus on staff development, the establishment of short courses and agreements between institutions for the collaborative teaching and funding of students and post-doctoral fellows.

The head of the Department of Health Policy, Planning and Management, Dr Moses Aikins who chaired the function, commended the School of Public Health of the University of Ghana, for its achievements because of its recognition as a problem solving institution and its support to regional disease control programmes.

He advised the students to strengthen their network even after the foundational course and expressed the hope that the course would continue for both students and supervisors.

The Director of Research and Development Division of the Ghana Health Service ((GHS), Dr Abraham Hodgson, expressed the commitment of his division to the initiative.

He said the division, with three research centres in the country, namely the Navrongo Health Research Centre in the northern belt, the Kintampo Health Research Centre in the middle belt, and the Dodowa Health Research Centre in the coastal belt, carried out research into health issues affecting the people of Ghana with feasible interventions to improve their health.

Vitamin A supplementation, bed nets, the national health insurance scheme, community health and public mining, and all the researches had influenced health policy in the country.

He was hopeful that the research work by the PhD students would also yield feasible solutions for public health policy interventions.

The Dean of the School of Research and Graduate Studies of the University of Ghana, Prof Kwadwo Ofori, officially opened the Foundational Course.