Navrongo Health Research Centre to be re-branded

Director of the Navrongo Health Research Centre [NHRC], Dr. Abraham Rexford Oduro, has stated that Management of the facility is initiating the necessary processes to rebrand the Centre to enable it to offer training programmes, capacity building and other related services to the public and organizations.

“We must go beyond just doing research to enable us to make a greater impact in society”, the Director of the Centre emphasized.

Dr. Oduro made the statement in his welcome address at the 3rd Annual General Scientific Review Meeting [AGSRM] of the Centre held at Navrongo in the Kassena-Nankana Municipality of the Upper East region on Friday.

The AGSRM offered a platform for the Centre to highlight activities on its key research projects, findings and other research interventions it is undertaking.

According to the Centre’s Director, management had put in place adequate logistics to aid research work as well as promote the execution of other official responsibilities, and that, staff had no excuse to underperform in any assigned tasks.

He urged the staff to challenge themselves, as this would push them to give off their utmost best.

Dr. Oduro said job descriptions, promotions and other indicators are being streamlined at the Centre and called on staff to further their education in areas that are relevant to the job.

He disclosed that in the 2015 research year, three new research projects on Maternal Health Survey had been taken on board to run concurrently with other projects rolled over from the past year.

A Director in Charge of Research and Development at the Ghana Health Service Headquarters, Dr. Abraham Hodgson in his address, said a continuous professional development programme for health personnel across the country would be rolled out soon and mentioned topics on ethical issues in research, data management, proposal writing and project presentation to donors as some of the courses, among others.

Dr. Hodgson, also a former Director of NHRC, hinted that, a National Ethics Committee is in the offing and would oversee all other ethics committees across the health sector upon its inauguration.

Meanwhile, quarterly review meetings are planned for heads and senior management of the three designated health research centres in Ghana cited at Navrongo, Dodowa and Kintampo.

The Research and Development Director also promised staff of the Centre and their colleagues at the other sister research centres that the headquarters is in negotiations with government and other stakeholders to absorb them into the Ghana Health Service payroll, adding that, if that is implemented, it would help the centres to undertake more research projects.

A Research Fellow at the NHRC, Madam Evelyn Sakeah, in her presentation on Maternal, Child and Newborn Health Survey in the Kassena-Nankana Districts, observed that high maternal and neonatal mortality are of serious concern in developing countries and the world over.

She said for instance, in 2013 alone, 286,000 maternal deaths occurred in developing countries while in Ghana over the same period, 3,100 maternal deaths cases was recorded.

According to Madam Sakeah, current estimates indicated that developing countries were still far from achieving the Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5.

She therefore called for more efforts and resources in this regard. The Annual General Scientific Review Meeting spanned over three days and witnessed presentations from various project researchers.