Enreca Health > Højrebokse > Said about ENRECA > Said by IB about ENRECA

Professor Ib Bygbjerg, Institute for International Health, Immunology and Microbiology, University of Copenhagen has been the Chairman of ENRECA Health since 1996. In retrospective he says:

"Danida has been among the first donors to focus on research capacity development in health through meaningful and equal partnerships with the South and also in actively supporting the establishment of the ENRECA Health network quite early. Now, with the Paris, Accra and Busan foras and declarations, development assistance and research capacity are seen as interconnected components. ENRECA Health has since its beginning been at the forefront with regards to addressing topics such as research ethics, interdisciplinary PhD courses (in particularly the PhD course in Uganda combining both qualitative and quantitative methods, ‘wet' and ‘dry' areas of research), and introducing new research areas such as health care systems in Africa in 1998 or ‘double burden of diseases' and Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in 2001, 10 years before the UN General Assembly 'spotted' NCDs. ENRECA Health has also worked systematically with more traditional areas such as Mother and child health, malnutrition, malaria, HIV, TB. We have addressed many of the advances in health technology such as ACT, ART, point of care diagnostics, vaccinology, etc.

In the future, there will be a strong need for innovation in the areas of advocacy, access, availability, and adherence. I personally hope to see an application of all the 'Advances'. If you have said 'A', you must also say 'B': namely 'Better performance of the systems' to deliver. Most of those systems are still deplorably sick and inflexible, and we urgently need better utilization of human resources for health. Just like a healthy mind in a healthy body can be a goal, we must find the research basis for how to develop healthy systems which can truly promote public health".