Page 90 - A Widening Idea of Health and Health Research - The South African Medical Research Council from Creation to COVID

Positively into the New South Africa: The MRC, 1995–2012

to the country’s health information system being comprehensively overhauled, ‘Data
is critical to us because it informs policy.’ She might well have gone on to add, ‘and
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BODRU is critical because it provides such data’.
More immediate in its impact was the Nutritional Intervention Research Units
(NIRUs) research on worms in learners on the Cape Flats and on nutritional
supplements most suitable for children. The latter led it to develop a sandwich spread
baked with red palm oil, which is rich in vitamin A. Extended trials showed that
adding this to a child’s diet had a beneficial effect on school performance and even on
attendance, which persuaded the Department of Education in 2005 to add it to the
national school-feeding scheme run by the National School Nutrition Programme,
with positive results.
In the Northern Cape, however, this spread was not widely dispensed in schools as
NIRU had found that children’s diet in that sheep-farming region was already high in
vitamin A, thanks to the frequent consumption, even at a young age, of sheep’s liver,

Umbiflow screening: Sister Agnes Sefatjana examines a pregnant mother using the Umbiflow
device, Mamelodi, Pretoria, c. 2020. The computer screen shows the characteristic waveform
of the umbilical artery.

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