Page 131 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

A Widening Idea of Health: The SAMRC from Creation to Covid

In some instances, so successful were such partnerships that projects begun in an
MRC-supported laboratory with SHIP’S support and under the eye of the Grants
Innovation and Product Development Unit were spun out into independent, state-of-
the-art companies like Gknowmix (a genetic research and information management
company), Jembi (a health information systems company) and Essential Medical
Guidance (a company providing the latest information to medical professionals on
medicines, dosage and treatment online or on mobile). Indeed, so pioneering was the
last-mentioned that in 2018 it won the Seedstars’ Best Health Technology in the World
Award. In all cases the MRC’s backing at the start of the project had been critical to
their putting down roots and flowering.
At a popular level the MRC’s image remained positive throughout the opening
decades of the 21st century, notwithstanding its troubles between 2002 and 2012,
largely thanks to its ongoing practical commitment to spreading medical knowledge
in the wider community. Thus, its Schools Outreach Programme continued to
send experienced teacher-scientists on its staff into schools to improve learners’
understanding of the latest developments in medical science; its Public Relations/
Corporate Communications Division regularly issued releases about new research
findings and current health matters to the press and digital platforms; its brochures,
newsletters and factsheets expanded on these; its simplified versions of the annual
report sought to make more widely accessible the nub of its recent work; and its
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exhibitions on and off its campus showcased some of its most notable research
breakthroughs. The MRC ‘is definitely out there’, rejoiced a proud MRC employee.
‘Efforts are being seen. Finally we have opened our gates, and [are] not hiding in our
own village disconnected from the real world as before.’
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Between 2017 and 2019, being ‘out there’ even included the participation by an
MRC team in the South African leg of the International March for Science in Durban.
From the front of this group Gray called on the public to recognize that ‘medical
research has [greatly] translated into lives saved and an increase in life expectancy in
South Africa … We encourage civil society to stand behind such movements … in
recognition of the impact that science has to advance the lives of all people’, goals
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towards which both she and Karim had actively steered the MRC since 2012, not
without some success.

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