|
|
As part of on-going programme innovation and expansion, the
Council has decided to launch an experimental institute on
Health, Politics and Society in Africa in a bid to promote an
enhanced interest in multidisciplinary health research among
African scholars. The initiative flows from the current CODESRIA
strategic plan which has placed a considerable emphasis on the
promotion of a social science approach to health studies in Africa
and a structured dialogue between the Social Sciences and the
Health/Biomedical Sciences. The initiative has also become
imperative at a time when the African continent is faced with one
of the most severe health crises in its history. Most symbolic of
this crisis is the HIV/AIDS pandemic which has been ravaging the
continent for sometime now even as such diseases as malaria
continue to take a heavy toll while tuberculosis and polio, once
under control, are enjoying a resurgence. The HIV/AIDS pandemic
itself came to the fore in the context of a generalised weakening
of the health structures and processes of African countries, as
well as the decline in the average health and nutritional status
of Africans, the latter speaking directly to the increased levels
of personal and household impoverishment on the continent. At the
root of the decline in the health status of Africans are such
factors as the prolonged economic crises which African countries
have faced in the period since the early 1980s, the inappropriate
adjustment measures prescribed by the International Financial
Institutions (IFI) for containing the crises but which
exacerbated the problems that were already being experienced in
the health sector, and the massive brain drain from the sector.
The main objectives of the Institute on Health,
Politics and Society are to:
-
Encourage the emergence and sustenance of a
networked community of younger African scholars in the field of
health research;
-
Promote methodological and conceptual
innovations in research on African health questions through the
application of an enhanced social science approach;
-
Encourage a structured dialogue between the
Social Sciences and the Health/Biomedical Sciences as part of
the quest for a holistic approach to understanding health,
politics and society in Africa; and
-
Promote the sharing of experiences among
researchers, activists and policy makers drawn from different
disciplines, methodological/conceptual orientations, and
geographical experiences on a common theme over an extended
period of time.
|
|
|
