News

University of Botswana (UB) and Botswana Harvard Health Partnership (BHP) recently engaged to discuss how to advance research and training programmes despite global funding issues. The partnership has added to the growth of research and training of health professionals.

UB Vice Chancellor, Professor David Norris, noted that while health sciences had seen growth in master’s and PhD programmes owing to the partnership, he argued that the overall numbers were still too low.

According to the newly appointed BHP Executive Director, Dr Gaerolwe Masheto, BHP has faced a 50 percent drop in funding that forced them to reduce staff and salaries. However, they managed to keep all research programmes running and even brought back some grants that had been lost. Before the cuts, BHP managed 101 grants; now they have 65 active ones and 10 were reinstated in the past two (2) months.

Professor Norris concurred that big funders preferred supporting groups working together rather than individual institutions and suggested forming consortia to attract support from funding organisations.

The conversation further touched on new opportunities in genomics. Dr Masheto added that BHP has advanced equipment that was not being used to its full potential and there were plans to develop courses for doctors in clinical genomics that could open doors for more collaboration and training in cutting edge science.