After the keynote address on Monday evening, a panel convened to discuss ‘productive partnerships’. Dr Kara Hanson, Director of the Global Health Programme at the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), led the discussion and kept order.
The panel participants were:
- Dr Rebecca Grais, Executive Director, Pasteur Network, France
- Dr Lindsay Keir, Director of Science and Policy, Impact Global Health, United Kingdom
- Dr Jutta Reinhard-Rupp, Ambassador of the H3D Foundation, Switzerland/South Africa
- Dr Magda Robalo, President and co-founder of the Institute for Global Health and Development (IGHD), Guinea Bissau
- Dr Luiz Zerbini, Director, International Centre of Genomic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), South Africa
- Dr Liesl Zuhlke, Vice President, South African Medical Research Council, South Africa
Several key themes emerged from these discussions:
- Partnerships need work: It is important to establish clear parameters, roles and responsibilities.
- The best partnerships are equitable not transactional: Partnerships should all share the same goal; benefits and successes should be shared.
- Engage with ‘beneficiaries’ to establish goals: Partnerships should have a clear purpose, identified through engagement with end-users and beneficiaries, such as communities and health workers. Clarity is needed on what their needs are and hence what the goal of the project should be.
- Base engagement on dialogue: Promote bidirectional communication with communities; listen and respond, and co-create African solutions to African problems.
- Measure equity: Equity is a key goal, but ways need to be found to measure it in practice so progress can be assessed.
- Product development partnerships (PDPs) have been highly successful: PDPs have delivered much-needed interventions, including a MenA vaccine and a child-friendly formulation of praziquantel. Industry partners have vital skills needed to navigate clinical development.
- International partnerships do not always meet these criteria: The EDCTP model is one to be emulated; the balance of too many others is still too far North.
- Partnerships take time: Relationships and processes take time to embed, which needs to be reflected in funding schemes.
- Funders have influence: Funders have great influence on how partnerships are established and operate; they need to use this influence to promote greater equity in research partnerships.
- Domestic investment is key: International partnerships can deliver major benefits to all partners, but should not tip over into dependency. Countries and bodies in Africa need to invest in developing national and regional research capacity, which will require but also drive economic growth.