Tag Archives: Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation

Tanzania’s Dr Hulda Shaidi Swai

I’ve developed a pet peeve over the years about Africa being discussed as if it were a country and not a continent made up of diverse countries and peoples. So, I was particularly delighted to find Robert Mpinga’s Jan. 26, 2012 article discussing Dr. Hulda Shaidi Swai’s nanomedicine work and his opinion of the differing approaches to research and development (R&D) followed in Tanzania and South Africa. From Mpinga’s Jan. 26, 2012 article for allAfrica,

One of our [Tanzania’s] own daughters, Dr Hulda Shaidi Swai, is currently making news across the world in her pioneering work that seeks to employ “nanotechnology” to treat TB and what she calls ‘other diseases of poverty’ more efficiently – and in less the time it takes now – yet still hopes to do so in safer ways.

There is no prize for guessing why you haven’t heard about her: she is doing all this from the comfort of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), a South African centre of excellence based in Pretoria. In many ways, Dr Swai embodies our country’s collective failure to accommodate people who think and act outside the box of our comfort zones.

Not surprisingly, Hulda could well be poised to make global waves even as we at home remain locked in mundane debate over the safety and perceived dangers of farming GM (genetically modified) crops – a field of science which now pales into yesteryear in the face of new advances of ‘nano’ frontiers.

Dr. Swai has received some very impressive support for her work,

The moral of Dr Swai’s story is not that she has set out on mission impossible; in fact, she has already marshaled a team of 19 people to her stable — the Nanomedicine Platform for Infectious Diseases of Poverty – which includes seven post-doctorate scientists, three PhD and four Masters of Science (MSc) students, two technicians and a project manager.

She also has the backing of the top leadership in South Africa, including former president Thabo Mbeki and the country’s minister responsible for science and technology. The commitment and imagination of all these men and women have been fired from a dream of this single Tanzanian woman scientist, but their combined resolve to act as a team has since won them global support: US $100,000 in project support from the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation – through its ‘Grand Challenges Exploration’ programme — the only one of two such awards in Africa to date, and an EU approval for its provisional application for intellectual property (IP) protection of its pioneering work on a novel anti-TB drug therapy delivery system.

Dr. Swai is critical of research being done in rich countries,

“The scientists in rich countries are only interested in diseases that affect them … not malaria.”

You’ll find more details about Swai’s work and more about her opinions  in Mpinga’s article. The ‘Grand Challenges Explorations’ programme was also mentioned in my Dec. 22, 2011 posting when a series of major grants  (some to researchers in Canada) was announced.