Page 65 - 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

a colleague in the EMC who had certain responsibilities, and my colleagues had their
responsibilities, and I deferred to them for advice if I needed that kind of information.’
30
He once described this as an integrating ‘mosaic model of management’. 31
This democratic thrust was very much in keeping with the values which Makgoba
sought to inculcate in the everyday operation of the MRC in a bid to foster an ethos
of social cohesion very different from the top-down, exclusivist and inwardly focused
culture which had characterized it until the 1990s. Appropriately, defining the key
elements of this ethos was the product of an 18-month consultative process among the
entire staff, an approach which brought with it wide-scale buy-in. ‘For the first time
I felt as if we … had a say in matters … We created the Values – it was a case of for
the people, by the people’, exulted one long-serving staffer. To an executive director
32
of the MRC, adoption of these values was a ‘launching pad for transformation’, an
33
aspiration perhaps as wishful as that the new logo adopted by the MRC in 2001 would
be accompanied by ‘rebirth and hope, appropriate in the light of the interventions that
the MRC is leading into alleviating South Africa’s health burden … [and helping to]
improve the quality of life of our people’.
34
To such high-flying hopes, however, the HIV/AIDS epidemic then enveloping
South Africa put paid. This added to the MRC’s positive approach to the new South
Africa a far less propitious positive, HIV+.

The new MRC logo, 2001,
embodying its fresh vision of
‘Building a Healthy Nation through
Research’. The DNA structure on
the left represents both health sciences
and the origins of humanity. On the
right the MRC’s goal of fostering
healthy, vibrant human beings
is depicted. The old logo which it
replaced is shown on page 35 above.

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