Page 117 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID
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A Widening Idea of Health: The SAMRC from Creation to Covid
infectious diseases, the Antibody Immunity Research Unit at the National Institute
for Communicable Diseases by trying to use passive immunity against the HI virus,
and the Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit by continuing the
work of the Pneumococcal and Meningeal Pathogens Research Unit at Witwatersrand
University but now extending this to include other neonatal diseases too, ‘in line with
the SAMRC’s strategic plan of research transformation’. A third research unit,
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the Stem Cell Research and Therapy Unit at the University of Pretoria, worked on
developing cell-based therapies to treat diseases like HIV, TB and cancer.
Not your usual fax machine: Dr Mqondisi Tshabalala of the MRC-Pretoria Stem Cell
Research and Therapy Unit explains to two colleagues, Dr Kimberley Peta (left) and Ms
Jamie Mollentze (right), the finer details of flow cytometry using a fluorescence activated
cell sorting (FACS) machine in the unit.
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