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viagra in canada Let’s talk about your vision for KEMRI. In other words we are now at 2011. By say 2015 or 2016, assuming the efforts you have put into structures; into policies; into ensuring people are incentivised; all these other things; assuming all this works as expected, where do you see KEMRI going and equally important, what will  you need, whether from government, from donors, from the public? What will you need if you are to get there?

viagra in canadaWell, first of all, our core mandate, which is what KEMRI has been doing since the inception of the institute in 1979, is research. That mandate has not changed, it will remain. And I see in the next few years, us intensifying our efforts towards research, and I would say here, relevant research.

We are now integrating most of our research to national development agenda through instruments like the Vision 2030, broken down into five-year Governments medium term frameworks. As an Institute we have to be clear how we are contributing to Vision 2030.  In thinking about Vision 2030, we have to ensure that we conduct relevant research. There are various public health problems which continue to affect our country. Take the case of Nutrition. We may be doing high level malaria research looking at the molecular biology of malaria parasites. But how relevant is such research if the people you are researching on are dying because of malnutrition? While we shall conduct both basic and clinical research, we should also become more responsive to matters of national importance which will bring about direct impact on reduction of disease burdens. We should also be visible, even if it means provision of advice, to a wide range of public health issues on the ground, including control of jiggers for example.

viagra in canada Yes, you cannot open a newspaper without seeing some report on the national campaign against jiggers.

viagra in canada Yes, jiggers may be considered more of a public health problem and appropriately handled by the public health authorities of the government but in the midst of it being a serious problem where it occurs, can we begin to ask some research questions about jiggers? Are there factors such as environmental changes that may be promoting the emergence of this organism? What is important to note here is that there could be some serious public health concerns in our populations which are receiving little if any attention by us as researchers, and hence the more important reason why we need to re-focus our research so that it becomes relevant. That’s number one.

Number two, I think eventually the country will have to look at R & D in general. Because if you look at all the countries that have been successful in development and their economies are actually growing, it is because they have invested heavily in research and development. Countries like Singapore and Malaysia, which were at par with Kenya at independence, have actually invested heavily in their R & D, and this has contributed to their current sound economic status.  Kenya, and many African countries, is investing very little in R&D. If you look at the research that is being conducted in KEMRI, over 75 per cent is externally funded.

I look forward to a time when funding for research is significantly enhanced, either through direct government funding or through other internal resources. This will enable us set national research priorities which we can finance and get results which can be applied immediately to address national health issues. So in terms of research, I see growth in research, and I see relevance of the research to the problems that we have here.

Now as far as the institute is concerned, we are also going to try and get into other areas that we probably haven’t got into in the past. The area of production, we just talked about kits, whose technology we have acquired to produce here. I talked about the kit for HIV/AIDS. We also have a kit for Hepatitis; In addition to these kits, we have other products; we have a disinfectant that is very good for general disinfection including hard-to-kill organisms like TB.

We also have a hand sanitizer product, we are producing molecular biology reagents; probably more other products will come in years to come. Our focus now is to strengthen our production department, so that we can commercialise these products to enhance internal revenue and perhaps generate surplus to return to the government.

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viagra in canada We will no longer be a burden to the Kenyan taxpayers. We may actually generate a surplus to share with the government, being our principal stakeholder on behalf of the Kenyan people.

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viagra in canada That’s right. We will not be a burden because the government may thereafter decide to put to other use the funds which it has been allocating to KEMRI.

Thirdly, you cannot separate research and training. They are one and the same thing. We have done research for many years, 32 years now since inception but along that process, we have also been training people. People who come in here with first degrees, after a couple of years, they have PhD. People who join the Institute as laboratory technologists end up doing other degrees that eventually enable them pursue PhDs. So training has been a core component of the research.

We now want to enhance our training programme by establishing a graduate school. We already have one in collaboration with some of our local universities but we want to acquire a university charter so that we can actually be giving Masters and PhD Degrees directly from KEMRI. There are of course some legislative technicalities because we were created through the Science and Technology Act while universities are created through a different Act.

So marrying the two can be a legislative challenge. But, fortunately, there is some discussion going on in parliament to see how to harmonise these Acts so that research institutes with the necessary infrastructure can also offer degrees. We believe we shall be able to acquire a charter to operate a university that will specialise on biomedical/laboratory/clinical training. We plan to learn from the main public universities who have, to date, run very successful training programmes as evidenced by their rapid expansion to cover the main cities of Nairobi, Kisumu and Mombasa.

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viagra in canada It is a very big sector. So if KEMRI owns a University, this means additional funding.  The bottom line is we are diversifying our activities without losing the main mandate of research. Research will always continue for as long as there remain diseases of public concern in our midst. And disease will always be with us. Who knew AIDS was coming?