Page 120 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

Slimmer, but Not Lacking Gray Matter: The MRC, 2012–2021

It’s in the genes: the formal opening of the MRC Genomics Centre in July 2019. The
director of the MRC’s Genomic Platform, Professor Craig Kinnear, outlines the Centre’s
plans to a high-profile audience which includes Mr LiHong Hou, China’s Counsellor for
Scientific and Technological Affairs (next to Kinnear), Professor Jeffrey Mphahlele, chair
of the MRC Board (his back to the window), and Professor Glenda Gray, the MRC’s
president (facing Kinnear).

From the research undertaken by some research units already in existence in 2012,
important results and insights continued to emerge too in these years, although their
influence on policy-making was neither guaranteed nor consistent. As one MRC
research platform soberly recognized, ‘The generation of knowledge does not, of
itself, lead to widespread implementation and positive impact on health.’ Its first
priority was therefore ‘generating the evidence that can be used to impact on policies
and guidelines’.
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In some research units this evidence primarily took the form of statistically based
data. From the Burden of Disease Research Unit (BODRU), for instance, demographic
information flowed continuously, mortality surveillance reports and profiles, burden of
disease studies, injury mortality surveys and comparative risk assessments all providing
policy-makers with information on health and health status that, it held, ‘should be
the bedrock of all decisions pertaining to the state of health in South Africa’. Pre-
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