Words before 800 Delegates of 100 Countries in the Last Plenary Session of the International Conference Health Research for Development, on October 13, 2000, at Bangkok.
Reflections on the Conference and Future Perspectives
By Rodolfo J. Stusser, M.D., from Cuba
Many thanks Drs. Suwanwela and Freij,
I would like to share with all of you a concern.
Since I received the discussion paper, I have been meditating the inadequacy of the different options for a new global architecture for health research for development to increase its progress in this new century.
Concretely, I am suggesting to analyze more in depth the still important potentiality of Option 1, which could be more improved, with the non-exclusive Option 6.
I disagree with the statements in the discussion paper, in the point that the new and more informal COHRED and Global Forum are not useful, redundant mechanisms to the one of the classic and more formal Advisory Committee on Health Research of WHO, and that they have not given enough results in hardly six and two years functioning. Really, there is not enough time to make an objective evaluation.
In the name of the most democratic global governance of health research for development for the Southern countries, I want to suggest two things:
First, I suggest to let COHRED and Global Forum have the liberty to do and improve their jobs with their specific and global health research complementary approaches beside the ACHR of WHO.
Second, I suggest being more patient and waiting some years more for increasing degrees of freedom that in the health research systems are producing electronic services, electronic
discussion groups, and all kinds of scientific exchanges of results and projects through the Internet first generation and for the implementation in the future of the second generation and other communication high technologies.I am convinced that science is the human intellectual activity that needs more flexible, open, pluralistic and free mechanisms to achieve its progress in the long term. The return to rigid, closed, centralized or no mechanisms, which were demonstrated in 40 years as insufficient, could make much more difficult the necessary progress of health research for development in our Southern countries.
Thank you very much for listening.
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Created on December 12, 2000, Refreshed in October 6, 2003