By KT Reporter
Scientists and policymakers from four countries, including Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia, have gathered in Kampala to identify and understand where health systems are going wrong, to develop innovations based on evidence and locally relevant.
Speaking at the learning forum held at Makerere University, Dr Kumanan Rasanathan, the Executive Director of the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research at the World Health Organisation, urged scientists to come up with ways of attracting their governments to fund generation of evidence locally if they are to sustainably come up with locally relevant solutions.
Rasanathan says that currently up to ninety per cent of this money is sourced externally through aid.
According to Prof Rhoda Wanyenze, the Dean of Makerere University School of Public Health, this is partly the reason as to why there’s largely no coordination between research and innovation despite the bumper support for public health programmes that have existed.
Wanyenze says many researchers have not been following up to ensure uptake of the knowledge they generate beyond publishing in scientific journals, and as a result, this knowledge does not make sense to the policymakers and the communities in which they generate it.
Dr Sarah Byakika, the retiring Commissioner of Planning at the Ministry of Health, revealed at the meeting that until recently, after the United States announced cuts in funding, the government did not know exactly what research was being undertaken and how much was coming into the country to finance it.
“Over ninety percent of research is externally financed. We were tasked to come up with a report on the impact of external finance cuts to health research but how much was coming in was not well-known”, she said, saying COVID-19 opened up a soft spot for science, which researchers should take advantage of to generate evidence that can be easily used by policymakers.
At Makerere University which is one of the institutions brokering evidence informed policy making in the region, Vice Chancellor Prof Barnabas Nawangwe says they have set up an innovations board to specifically bridge the gap between scientists and users of the evidence they generate and are now engaged in partnerships with universities elsewhere in the region to share knowledge.
Prof Freddie Ssengooba, a Public Health Policy researcher based at MakSPH, says other countries like Somalia have a lot to learn from Makerere University since they are only starting to re-establish themselves. He noted that the cross–country learnings being done under the Partnerships for Stronger Knowledge Systems in Africa arrangement are vital as they will help them copy best practices and scale them.
According to him, Ugandan researchers have previously encountered challenges of policymakers not fully understanding evidence presented to them, only for them to come back asking for the same data years later.
However, policy makers attending the meeting expressed concern that some research is too complex to be internalised by lay people.
For instance, Kenneth Lusaka, the Governor of Bungoma County in Kenya, said sometimes science goes too deep into science and forgets that it’s meant to address societal issues. He cited the example of the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, which has faced hesitancy partly because society did not understand its relevance despite being based on solid research-URN. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com
