[Ip-health] FromBamako: WHO strategy on research for health

[thiru@keionline.org]

http://www.keionline.org/blogs/2008/11/18/frombamako-who-strategy-on-resear=
ch-for-health/

FromBamako: WHO strategy on research for health

The Global Ministerial Forum on Research for Health is Meeting in Bamako,
Mali from November 17-19, 2008. This Ministerial is organized by the
Council on Health Research for Development (COHRED), Global Forum for
Health Research, the Republic of Mali, the United Nations Cultural,
Scientific and Educational Organization (UNESCO), the World Bank and the
World Health Organization (WHO), and coordinated by the Bamako 2008
Secretariat.

One of the outputs of this Ministerial is the Bamako Call to Action which
calls upon WHO, UNESCO and partners to =93implement its new Research for
Health Strategy as a means of harnessing research for health improvement,
reflecting both the [WHO Intergovernmental Working Group on Public
Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property Global Strategy and Plan of
Action] GSPA and the work of the high level Task Force on scaling-up
research to strengthen health systems=94. It is understood that the Bamako
Call to Action will be transmitted to the WHO Executive Board for its
consideration as well as UNESCO.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the WHO Research
Strategy emanated from a request by the 120th Session of the Executive
Board in January requesting the Director-General

    to submit to the Sixty-second World Health Assembly a strategy for the
management and organization of research activities within WHO.

The WHO Research Strategy has not been approved yet; it will be submitted
to the WHO Executive Board in January 2009. If accepted, it will be
transmitted to the World Health Assembly (May 2009). During the
discussions of the Bamako Call to Action, and in a workshop on the WHO
strategy on research for health and the WHO IGWG Global Strategy and Plan
of Action, Sally Davies (Director-General, Research and Development,
Health Department, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)
twice intimated that it was the view of her Government that the IGWG
Global Strategy and Plan of Action be subsumed under the WHO research
agenda. The fact that a government representative has suggested that an
inter-governmental process bearing the consensus imprimatur of 193 WHO
Member States (the IGWG global strategy) play second fiddle to a strategy
not even adopted by WHO strikes your blogger as problematic. The January
2009 Executive Board could constitute a flash point between the WHO Global
Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual
Property and the inchoate WHO strategy on research for health.