Page 57 - 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

had occupied simultaneously. This meant that such a concentration of power in the
hands of one person would no longer be possible. Henceforth, the president would
be chosen by the Board, and the chairman by the Minister of Health. To enhance the
MRC’s financial capability, the Act also authorized it to market any of its inventions
or discoveries itself or to set up companies to do so. ‘Its intention is to breathe the
fresh air of free enterprise into the normally non-commercial corridors of academia’,
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rejoiced one MP during the debate on the bill in Parliament. With great enthusiasm
a Technology Development and Transfer Directorate was quickly instituted at the
MRC, but the very concept of commercializing its inventions was soon put under
question because of the Medtech debacle. Thereafter, until South Africa’s transition to
democracy in 1994 altered the MRC’s straitened financial situation, commercialization
was pursued only with great circumspection.
The new Act also sought to facilitate collaboration between the MRC and foreign

A researcher from the Research Institute for Diseases in a Tropical Environment examines
floating mosquito traps in 1985 as part of a study on malaria in Africa.

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