Page 157 - 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

48 MRC, AR 1977, p. 99.
49 MRC, AR 1981, p. 35.
50 MRC, AR 1982, p. 44.
51 MRC, AR 1976, p. 56. For an example of this comparative racial approach going international using South
African data, see A. A. Salyers, J. F. Sperry, T. D. Wilkins, A. R. P. Walker and N. J. Richardson. ‘Neural
Steroid Concentrations in the Faeces of North American White and South African Black Populations at
Different Risks for Cancer of the Colon’, South African Medical Journal, 51, 23 (4 June 1977), pp. 823–7.
52 M. Cueto, T. M. Brown and E. Fee, The World Health Organization: A History (CUP, Cambridge, 2019), p. 85.
53 MRC News, 30, 6 (December 2000), p. 17.
54 MRC, AR 1982, p. 7.
55 Interview with Professor Val Mizrahi, 29 November 2021.
Chapter 3. On and over the Brink,: The MRC, 1985–1994
1 D. Yach, Project Unthinkable: A Doctor’s Gamble to Save Millions of Lives (Barlow eBook, Toronto, 2018),
loc. 368.
2 Under pressure from the Minister of Health, Brink gave up the deanship of Medicine at the University of
Stellenbosch in 1984 so he could become president of the MRC full-time and concentrate solely on this task.
3 MRC, AR 1983, p. 3.
4 MRC, AR 1987, p. 3.
5 MRC, AR 1983, p. 8.
6 Sunday Times, 6 October 1985, p. 109.
7 It replaced the anodyne ‘Shaping a healthy future’, which itself had replaced ‘Scire volumus’ (We wish to
know) in 1989.
8 MRC Archives, MRC Board meeting, 22 June 1993, Attachment p. 77: ‘Medical Research Council (MRC)
Strategy’.
9 MRC, AR 1989, p. 4.
10 MRC, AR 1993, p. 7.
11 O. W. Prozesky, ‘From Science Council to Health and Medical Research Organisation: 25 Years of MRC
History’, South African Medical Journal, 84, 7 (7 July 1994), p. 375.
12 MRC, Strongroom A119, boxfile ‘Medtech 1’: G. van Rensburg, ‘Opportunities for Technology
Application in Medical Services’, n.d., pp. 4–7.
13 Salute: MRC Staff Newsletter, November 1993, p. 5.
14 MRC, AR 1988, p. v.
15 The internal units closed were the Tropical Disease and the Environmental Disease Research Units, while
the external one was the Metabolic Research Group.
16 To avoid giving the impression that this was a fait accompli even before discussion, the Council – now
renamed the Board – specifically requested that the relevant agenda item, ‘Staff Reduction: Policy
and Strategy’, be retitled ‘Restructuring of the Personnel Complement’ (MRC Archives, MRC Board
Minutes, 29 May 1991, p. 9).
17 ‘Inside Story’, volume 2, 1 (June 1997) in MRC News, 28, 2 (June 1997).
18 ‘Inside Story’, volume 2, 4 (November 1997) in MRC News, 28, 4 (November 1997).
19 MRC, AR 1993, p. 7.
20 MRC News, 29, 5 (December 1998), p. 4.
21 MRC Archives, MRC Board meeting, 4 March 1993, Attachments, p. 8: Minutes of meeting of MRC
Board, 29 October 1992.
22 Salute, November 1993, p. 2.
23 Email to author from Dr D. Yach, 16 August 2020.
24 MRC digital booklet, ‘SAMRC@50’, p. 119.

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