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"Today, we have no architecture for global research for health," say representatives of the Bamako 2008 Steering Committee.

The Global Forum will hold a symposium on ‘Research priorities’.

Global Forum to host a global consultation on research for improved policy.

Preparatory work for the second session of the WHO Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property draws specific attention to the work of the Global Forum in the areas of priority setting and funding for health research.

Initiative for a European Council on Global Health launched. Meeting in Geneva, over 30 participants from 25 institutions around Europe agreed that Europe should exercise more leadership in global health and mobilize the diversity of European actors to contribute to policy, research and action for global health goals. More

Global Ministerial Forum on Research for Health attracted record participation and culminated in a Call to Action and Communiqué.

The Council on Health Research for Development (COHRED)and the Global Forum for Health Research have taken a further step in building their partnership, with the agreement of the management of both organizations to further integrate their activities and programmes of work.

The new arrangement will provide actors in research for health at the global, regional and country levels with common contact points and a set of linked programmes aimed at improving health and health equity.

The partnership leverages the talents of both organizations to support countries in improving health research systems and encourage learning between countries.

• Full press release (pdf)
• COHRED website (pdf)

“Why have policy-makers so often ignored the best evidence for improving the health of their people? And why have researchers failed to get their messages through to the politicians?” asks Robert Walgate, who will moderate HR4D-net, a brand new platform for debate among those concerned with health research for development, launched today by INASP and the Global Forum for Health Research.

One answer may be the lack of good, clear two-way communications channels, but when HR4D-net opens for business on Monday (22 May 2022) the story could change.

HR4D-net will begin with a worldwide discussion on next week’s potentially heated debate on R&D in Geneva. Virtually every nation’s health minister will be at the annual World Health Assembly of the World Health Organization in Geneva.

• Full press release (pdf)
• Sign up for HR4D

The Global Forum announces the publication of the first bilingual edition of one of its publications. The Combined Approach Matrix text was translated into Portuguese and printed by the Brazilian Ministry of Health.

• Full text (pdf)

The Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI) was registered on 8 June 2022 as a Swiss Foundation.

Its founding members are Professor Robert E Black (USA), Dr Claudio Lanata (Peru) and Prof Marcel Tanner (Switzerland). CHNRI initiated activities in 2001 with the support of the Global Forum for Health Research, the World Health Organization and the World Bank.

• CHNRI website

The meeting highlighted that though there have been resources gathered for research and development since the first Stop TB Global Plan, compared with other global health issues, tuberculosis has suffered from a lack of investment in research. As a movement it has not harnessed the power of research by mobilizing the necessary resources and facilitating synergistic activities.

The discussion revealed that there is a global trend in R&D activities towards increasingly interdisciplinary, interagency, international and interactive networks, which provides an opportunity for the TB partnership to play a critical role in fostering a vibrant research community and mobilizing the resources it needs.

It was pointed out that the Stop TB Partnership can learn from the history of HIV R&D, in particular the role activism has played in increasing funding and support for the movement. Whether TB should embrace or reject controversy, how to enhance global coordination and industry involvement were among the issues raised during the meeting.

• Full text (pdf)
• Stop TB Partnership website

Several friends of the Global Forum were recently recognized for their work and service in the British New Year Honours list:

• Richard Feachem, Anne Mills, Carol Priestley.
• Adnan Hyder receives IRTE & Prince Michael International Road Safety Award 2006.
• Abdul Ghaffar receives Best Publication Award 2005.

The Initiative for Cardiovascular Health Research (IC Health) announces a Call for Proposals for research related to reducing cardiovascular risk in diabetes.

• Call for proposals (pdf)

Deadline: 31 January 2023

On 4 January 2006, the Secretariat for the Road Traffic Injuries Research Network was launched in Kandy, Sri Lanka. The establishment of the Secretariat in Sri Lanka, hosted by the University of Peradeniya, is a response to both the growing burden of road traffic injuries in low- and middle-income countries and the need to identify effective intervention strategies that are of specific relevance to the traffic conditions prevalent in these countries.

Representatives of the Global Forum for Health Research, the World Health Organization, the University of Peradeniya and the Sri Lankan government, together with members of the RTIRN Board, witnessed the launch ceremony that was followed the next day by a research skills building workshop for local and regional road traffic injury researchers from eight South east Asian countries.

The Road Traffic Injuries Research Network is a global partnership for the promotion, conduct and utilization of research for the prevention and control of road traffic injuries in low - and middle-income countries. It is supported by the Global Forum for Health Research, the World Health Organization, the World Bank and The George Institute for International Health.

Full details of the launch, workshop and the presentations will be available shortly at www.rtirn.net.

A new £5m DFID fund for research into health policy and systems that work to the benefit of the poor, often utilizing simple solutions, has been awarded to the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research.

The Alliance is an initiative originally fostered by the Global Forum for Health Research and now administered by the World Health Organization in collaboration with the Global Forum.

• Full DFID press release
• Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research website

The call for nominations is open for the first annual Stop TB Partnership Kochon Prize, to be awarded to a person(s), institution(s)or organization(s) demonstrating exceptional commitment to the global fight against TB.

The prize, supported by the Kochon Foundation (Republic of Korea), consists of a medal and and a sum of US$ 65,000 to be awarded annually.

• Stop TB Partnership website

Deadline for nominations: 24 March 2022

• Download announcement (pdf)

The BIAS FREE Framework is a tool designed to provide a unified approach to detect biases that derive from any and all social hierarchies. It is informed by voluminous research on gender, racist and ableist biases.

In "The BIAS FREE Framework: A New Analytical Tool for Global Health Research", published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health, Margrit Eichler and Mary Anne Burke report on the outcome of a workshop conducted in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, in May 2005.

• Full article (pdf)

in Canadian Journal of Public Health, Volume 97, Number 1, January/February 2006
with permission from the Canadian Public Health Association

The Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) is an initiative of the Global Forum for Health Research, first established with its funding in January 2004.

The SVRI Secretariat was first hosted by the World Health Organization's Department of Gender, Women and Health under the direction of Claudia Garcia-Moreno. Following an international competition for a new host organization, the Secretariat of the SVRI relocated to Pretoria, South Africa in January 2006, and is being hosted by the Medical Research Council of South Africa under the direction of Rachel Jewkes.

The SVRI is currently calling for nominations for Coordinating Group members who are committed to actively promoting research on sexual violence and would join the group for a three year period.

Deadline for submission of nominations: 15 March 2006.

• Call for nominations (pdf)
• SVRI website

On the occasion of the 2006 International Women's Day, the Global Forum for Health Research advocates strongly for "Women in decision-making: meeting challenges, creating change" in the context of the global health research agenda so that girls and women everywhere may achieve the health that is their right.

• Read on (pdf)

Denmark recently announced that it will commit 25 million Danish krones (US$ 4 million) for 2006 to global immunization programmes through the GAVI Alliance (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) and its partners.

The contribution was announced at a meeting of international global health experts, The Copenhagen Panel on Key Challenges for Global Health Partnerships, which brought together representatives from leading Global Health Partnerships (GHPs) to discuss ways and means to enhance their life-saving efforts by increasing collaboration at both global and local levels.

The declaration by the Danish government follows Brazil's recent announcement that it will contribute US$ 20 million to the International Finance Facility for Immunization (IFFIm).

• Full GAVI press release
• IFFIm website

"Investing in health research, including research training, is one of the best investments that can be made towards improving health now and for generations to come," says the Global Forum's Abdul Ghaffar.

• Full interview
• COHRED website
• TDR website

Three new members joined the Foundation Council in 2006: Mushtaque Chowdhury, Director of the Research and Evaluation Division of BRAC in Bangladesh and Dean of the newly established BRAC School of Public Health; Soledad Diaz, cofounder and member of the Chilean Institute of Reproductive Medicine; and Rose Leke, Professor of Immunology and Parasitology at the Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Yaounde, Cameroon.

Global Forum governance

The Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) Secretariat, hosted since January 2006 by the Medical Research Council of South Africa, just launched its new website.

• SVRI website

SVRI is an initiative of the Global Forum for Health Research.

21 April: In a press briefing on the occasion of the launch of the Global Forum publication, Stephen Matlin, Executive Director (photo), highlighted some of the key messages.

Read about: the sources of funds for basic research that leads to new pharmaceuticals; the development of public-private partnerships (PPPS) and their sources of investment; and how developing countries are spending in health research.

Download the publication

IC-Health (Initiative for Cardiovascular Health Research in Developing Countries) was launched yesterday as an independent foundation in a small celebration at the offices of the Global Forum for Health Research in Geneva.

"Today IC-Health has emerged as an independent legal entity with new confidence that it can function on its own," said Dr K Srinath Reddy, Co-Chair of the Foundation Council of IC-Health.

IC-Health funds research in 23 LMICs across Asia and South America, with a new focus on Africa.

• Full story (pdf)
• IC-Health website

A review in this week's issue of THE LANCET highlights how concerted action is urgently needed worldwide to tackle the global burden of injuries and deaths caused by road-traffic crashes.

Around 1*2 million people were killed and 50 million injured in road-traffic crashes worldwide in 2002, costing the global community about US$ 518 billion. Without appropriate action, road-traffic injuries are predicted to escalate from the ninth leading contributor to the global burden of disease in 1990 to the third by 2020.

A 2004 WHO report and the subsequent collaboration of 42 agencies worldwide led to the UN General Assembly to pass a new resolution on road safety on Oct 26, 2005; in addition to recommending the implementation of the WHO report to reduce road-traffic injuries and deaths, the UN also called for the organisation of the first UN Global Road-Safety Week (April 23-26, 2007); and requested that Member States and the international community recognise the third Sunday in November of every year as the World Day of Remembrance for Road-Traffic Victims.

Associate Professor Shanthi Ameratunga (University of Auckland, New Zealand) and colleagues outline the current evidence for the severe toll that road-traffic crashes have worldwide, and emphasise the under-reported burden in low and middle-income countries.

Dr Ameratunga comments: "Although the numbers of lives lost in road crashes in high-income countries indicate a downward trend in recent decades, for most of the world's population, the burden of road-traffic injury-in societal and economic costs-is rising substantially. The global commitment to implement recommendations of the 2004 world report, and in particular, address the disparities evident in low-income and middle-income countries, is vital.

This will only be possible with the concerted effort of policy makers, public-health practitioners, road safety advocates, community groups and other committed partners, working within a common framework, as envisaged and supported by the UN."

• Full article (pdf)
• The Lancet.com
• RTIRN website

30 May 2007: Poster on "New Global Partnership Architectures for Health Research" presented by Stephen Matlin at the Global Health Council's annual meeting in Washington, DC.

• Gill Samuels comments.
• Gill Samuels elected as next chair of the Foundation Council.
• Zulfiqar Bhutta and Anthony MBewu become members.
• Richard Horton receives Edinburgh Medal.

Malaria product portfolio would benefit from greater cohesion amongst stakeholders, new Global Forum-funded Report concludes.