The international news media continues to be slow in covering the 2008 Global Ministerial Forum
on Research for Health. However, there are brief articles about the event from the African Press Organization and China View (article available in French only).

What can be done to get the media to take more notice of events like this one and the issues which they seek to address? Respond to this blog to make your views more widely known.

Just published and highly relevant to the Bamako meeting is a new report from Oxfam - Crisis in Public Health: Promoting pro-poor medical innovation

Oxfam says money is still being misspent and calls for new approaches to be developed. According to the report: “…it is a combined responsibility of all countries to find ways to ensure global R&D is organized to improve human health; inability to pay should not disenfranchise a large majority of the world’s population from access to effective healthcare.”

The report will be considered in more detail on TropIKA.net shortly. Meanwhile an Oxfam press release is available here and the report in full may be accessed here.

How much attention will the world’s press pay to the 2008 Global Ministerial Forum on Research for Health in Bamako? The issues being addressed are crucial to the health of the world’s poorest people but so often such matters do not seem to interest the media. A search on the net today reveals very little in the way of pre-meeting coverage.

It is good therefore to see a report that three Sierra Leonean journalists will be present at the meeting. Other countries from which there will be journalists attending include Liberia, Guinea, Nigeria, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Togo, Senegal, Russia, Ivory Coast, Benin and Palestine.

Read the full report here.

What is a TropIKA.net Featured Meeting?

The infectious diseases of poverty are a key part of discussions at many international and regional meetings but, inevitably, many people are not able to attend these gatherings. Even those who are present may be unable to form a clear picture of an event overall, because their time is spent in a small number of specialist sessions.

Meeting organisers produce final reports but these often take some time to appear, may lack crucial detail and may not come to the attention of all those with an interest in the meeting.

Since the launch of TropIKA.net, one important part of our project has been the Featured Meetings ‘knowledge hub’, the aim of which is to enhance preparation, participation and contributions of participants in major international health research conferences. Comprehensive summaries of technical information currently available on agenda topics are provided and also daily reports of the proceedings. The aim is to facilitate dialogue among participants and to inform others with an interest in the meeting who are unable to attend.

TropIKA.net was launched a year ago during the first of our first Featured Meetings – the 11th Annual Conference of the Global Forum for Health Research (‘Forum 11) held in Beijing. Our coverage of that event may be seen here.

Since then we have also featured the 2008 Algiers Ministerial Conference on Research for Health in the African Region and the First Meeting of the African Network for Drugs and Diagnostics Innovation (ANDI).

Now we are delighted to be featuring the 2008 Global Ministerial Forum on Research for Health, which is taking place in Bamako, Mali, 17-18th November. As described in a TropIKA.net news story and discussed in an editorial, this is a meeting of considerable importance. We wish all the participants an enjoyable and enjoyable meeting. Our team which includes six journalists and ten rapporteurs will provide: daily summaries of the sessions, interviews with speakers, participants and leaders in the field, and a blog covering all areas of the meeting. We hope this will be of service both to those in Bamako and, crucially, to those who couldn’t make it.

We hope to expand the number and range of our Featured Meetings and we welcome feedback on both the concept and how we are performing in practice. Please let us know.

Paul Chinnock
Editor-in-Chief, TropIKA.net