Page 139 - 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

For her part, Gray believed that had she not had the MRC’s name and standing
behind her, her intervention would not have been successful. ‘Having the MRC brand
legitimized my action’, she reflected in retrospect. ‘There’s a blending of me as a
scientist and me as MRC president which allowed this to happen. Had I been [just] a
scientist, I would never have been able to pull it off.’ Like no other action since its
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creation – except perhaps when Malegapuru Makgoba, then its president, strongly
opposed AIDS denialism at the beginning of the century – the Sisonke Study raised
the positive public profile of the MRC and its can-do president to unprecedented levels
both nationally and internationally. A high point in the MRC’s history, this epitomized
its mission ‘to advance the nation’s health and quality of life’, to which Gray added in
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the light of the Sisonke Study, ‘and respond [to health crises] in a timely fashion.’
Less dramatic but no less important in keeping Covid-19 at bay were the mask-
related studies by two of the MRC’s research units. That by the Centre for the Study

In a time of plague: the MRC’s watershed intervention, the Sisonke Vaccine Study, May 2021.
Left to right at the Hlabisa Hospital vaccination site in KwaZulu-Natal: Mr Mesuli Mhlongo,
Mr Simphiwe Cele, Dr Elizabeth Spooner, Ms Nivriti Hurbans, Ms Mduduzi Mdletshe, Mr
Sibusiso Nhleko, Mr Sifundo Dladla, Ms Awonke Makholwa, Ms Olwethu Sogoni.

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