By Fatoumatta J Camara
The Health Research Directorate of the Ministry of Health, Wednesday 13th February 2024, commenced two-day workshop on health research at Senegambia Hotel.
The programme which was supported by World Health Organization (WHO) brought together participants drawn from different institutions within the health sector.
Deputy Permanent Secretary Technical, Babanding Sabally, on behalf of the Minister of Health welcome the gathering to the event. He said the workshop was initiated by the health minister in July last year during a visit to Geneva, Switzerland.
“As we know health research improves health status and it calls for systems to be in place to safeguard those rights and research ethics is one of the systems,’’ he noted. ‘’Oversight committees must carry out writings of every stage of this workshop to ascertain the health status as WHO has benchmark to rate progress which helps to show what has been achieved and what we need to work on.’’
He disclosed that committees working to establish the health status of the country included; Gambia Government ethics committees, MRC and Medicine Control Agency.
“This workshop should help us to come up with solutions to our challenges in terms of quality health service delivery” he added.
Prof. Andreas Reis, Head of ethics and governance unit, Department of Research for Health at WHO in Geneva, gave a background of the initiative and also the expectations from the workshop.
“This workshop was organized with request from the Ministry of Health of the Gambia and we are here to help Gambia strengthen research in health. We will assess the state of the art of the research in Gambia and after the workshop we will come up with recommendations,” he explained.
The two-day event brought together health professionals locally and experts from Europe, Africa and international agencies with the aim of assessing and developing strategies on health research ethics and come up with recommendations to address the country’s health needs.