Finding a way out-Getting Serious about Research

I have recently returned from a long visit to Sierra Leone. Well, Freetown, if you want to be picky.

One of the things that bothered me while there was the appalling quality of the news reporting. My disappointment is against all sections of the news media, electronic as well as print. As for the latter, the least I say about it (for now), the better. I hope I shall find time to do a more comprehensive rant about it in the near future. For the electronic media, all that needs to be said can be distilled into a single lament: that even the BBC’s stringer in Sierra Leone’s second city, Bo, has been caught fabricating a story.


You might well wonder why I am starting a blog with a wail over the state of the press in Sierra Leone. In the best of circumstances anyone would have to have a whole bellyful of guts to take on the media. But I am not reckless. I feel forced to complain about it because of opportunities it so often loses in leading intelligent debate on issues of public importance. This time, the one that is being so badly managed is one affecting the public health; in particular, the government of Sierra Leone’s avowed intent to institute “free” health care for pregnant women, lactating mothers and children under the age of 5 come April 27 this year.


I am happy to state, however, that about the time when this initiative was beginning to cause serious difficulties for the government, a conference, addressing just this issue and others concerning why Sierra Leone has this terrible record on maternal and child health that has scarred the nation so these long years. The conference, organized by the Sierra Leone Health and Biomedical Research Group, brought together a number of researchers over a two day period at the Taia Resort Hotel, pleasantly situated along the sandy shores of the famed Lumley Beach, just outside Freetown.


Not distracted by the seductions of the blue waters and golden sands, the researchers, coming from places as widely dispersed as the United States National Institutes of Health, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the United Kingdom as well as Sierra Leone itself, tackled matters such as maternal and child health and other issues affecting women’s health. Other public Health issues that were discussed included cancers, malaria, epilepsy and some of the so-called neglected tropical diseases such as helminthic infestations, sickle cell and Lassa fever.


The most significant theme that ran through the symposium was a sense that an evidence-based methodology was essential for a rational approach to solving the myriad public health problems that face Sierra Leone, and that this was most likely to be achieved if research was conducted on a cooperative platform.


Many young students were present at the meeting and it was gratifying to note that their number included not only medical and natural science graduates and undergraduates, but also some in the social sciences as well. Perhaps a turning point may well have been reached for a multi-disciplinary approach that will incorporate the social sciences in the type of biomedical research that is going to be pivotal in solving our problems.

Tell Fren Tru