Page 155 - 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

12 Interview with Dr Clive Rosendorff, 14 August 2020.
13 Brink, Brood op mediese waters, p. 156.
14 Interview with Professor Salim Abdool Karim, 6 October 2020.
15 Interview with Mrs Julia Aalbers, 3 September 2020.
16 Interview with Mrs Julia Aalbers, 3 September 2020.
17 A. J. Brink (ed.), Woordeboek van Afrikaanse geneeskundeterme (Nasou, Goodwood, 1979), Foreword by B.
J. Vorster.
18 Professor William Pick as cited in L. Gentle, ‘History of the MRC’ (Unpublished digital report, MRC,
2019), p. 12.
19 Act 19 of 1969, South African Medical Research Council Act, clause 3(b). Note, however, that in the
MRC’s first annual report (1969–70), p. 5, the summary of this clause omitted this phrase. Note too that
clause 3(a) preceding this, in the MRC’s summary version, referred to ‘the health of all people in South
Africa’, whereas the Act used the phrase ‘the health of the people in the Republic’. Whether this Talmudic
analysis has uncovered quiet political or merely stylistic recension is moot.
20 A. J. Brink (ed.), South African Medical Research: Twenty Years of Growth (Owen Burgess, Pinetown,
1988), Preface and p. 5.
21 Interview with Mrs Julia Aalbers, 3 September 2020.
22 Brink, Brood op mediese waters, p. 147.
23 Gentle, ‘History of the MRC’, p. 14.

Chapter 2. Aanmatiging *(Self-Assertion): The MRC, 1969–1985
* The use of the Afrikaans term aanmatiging for the chapter’s title is an allusion to the MRC’s predominantly
white Afrikaner culture in these years.
1 South African Medical Research Council [henceforth MRC], Annual Report [henceforth AR] 1969–70, p. 5.
2 Sunday Times, 25 March 1984, p. 33.
3 Cape Times, 3 May 1987, p.20.
4 Sunday Times, 23 August 1979, p. 24.
5 MRC, AR 1979, p. 8.
6 Die Burger, 21 May 1980, p. 15. Translations from Afrikaans here and subsequently are by the author.
7 For Brink’s litany of these, see A. J. Brink, Brood op mediese waters: Mosaïek uit die professionele lewe van
Andries Brink (Clinics-Cardive Publishing, 2003), pp. 150–1.
8 MRC, AR 1974, Inside of front cover.
9 MRC, AR 1973, p. 15.
10 MRC, AR 1982, p. 6.
11 MRC, AR 1981, p. 5.
12 Sunday Times, 6 October 1985, p. 109.
13 MRC, AR 1979, p. 8.
14 MRC, Strongroom A119, boxfile ‘Medtech 1’: G. van Rensburg, ‘Opportunities for Technology
Application in Medical Services’, n.d.
15 Of these, 8 were at UCT, 4 at the University of the Witwatersrand, 3 jointly at Witwatersrand and the
SA Institute for Medical Research, 6 at the University of Stellenbosch, 2 at the University of Pretoria, 2
at the University of the Orange Free State and 1 at Baragwanath Hospital. To some researchers outside
the western Cape this allocation of research support suggested undue favouring of institutions near to
‘Medicina’, a complaint often repeated in succeeding decades. As recently as 2022 one Johannesburg-
based researcher grumbled, ‘Propinquity is a big issue and the MRC could do better in terms of engaging
with groups who are not so close by’ (Interview with Professor Karen Hofman, 17 March 2022).
16 MRC Archives, MRC Board meeting, 31 October 1991, Attachment: D. Yach, ‘Community Health Research
Group of the MRC: Review of the First Eighteen Months, April 1990 – October 1991’, p. 3.

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