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Biography |
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Dr. Francis Ohanyido is a physician and current National NTD Advisor/Representative (Head of Mission equivalent, Nigeria) of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, an initiative of the Sabin Vaccine Institute Washington, DC. He is also notably a Senior Fellow the West African Academy of Public Health (WAAPH), a major research, training and implementation organization, and Board Member of the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, Nigeria. Close to two decades, Ohanyido has worked with diverse international organizations like the UNHCR, UNICEF, and WHO across Africa, as well as USAID flagship RMNCH and Policy projects in Nigeria. He worked with UNHCR in Liberian humanitarian setting. He has at various times served as a Technical Advisor to the Senate Committee on Health in Nigeria and also Senior Technical Consultant to the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives of Nigeria, and was a member of the coalition that successfully supported Nigerian government to midwife the National Health Act until its passage in 2014. He served as high-level liaison to The Presidency/National Planning Commission for Scaling up Nutrition (SUN) programme with funding from Save the Children Nigeria, and advocated for nutrition desk officers in some of the line ministries in Nigeria. More recently, he served as the National Pneumonia Coordinator in Nigeria, funded by USAID Nigeria and implemented by John Snow Inc. (JSI) in collaboration with UNICEF, under the auspices United Nations Commission for Lifesaving Commodities for women and children (UNCoLSC). He was notable for working with NAFDAC and US Pharmacopoeia and other partners to successfully market-shape for local production of dispersible Amoxicillin tablets for childhood pneumonia, as well as Chlorhexidine. He has a medical degree from University of Jos, postgraduate training in public health, ICT and management. He is a fellow of both the Royal Society for Public Health (UK) and the Royal Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (UK), Senior Fellow of the Academy of Learning Nigeria and alumnus of TH Chan Harvard School of Public Health’s flagship health outcome research course. He is a martial artist, poet and strong advocate for African leadership Renaissance.
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Abstract |
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Why are publications in Africa so limited? |
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We diverge from popular belief that low scientific publications in Africa are mainly as a result of poor academic infrastructure, poor incentives, poverty and laziness on the part of scholars. These are the common explanation for the persistent failure of good publications. An evolutionary incidence model of overall incidence of scientific research publications across the sub-regions of the continent from 1996 to date (two decades), we were able to infer that the ‘relatively’ lower output of publications across Africa, may have more reasons beyond the ones commonly assumed. We were able to draw lessons from the often overlooked defective systems for knowledge transfer through mentoring cascade in academic environment. We argue that the best and fastest strategy to scale up is to reduce ‘stataphobia’ by increased peering, enhancing learning within communities of interest, promoting research methods early in academic life with enhanced access to qualitative mentoring. These would help overcome the basic bottlenecks and help promote ‘academic and strongly promote inter-group cooperation across the region, particularly in systems around research governance and training. We therefore advance some hypotheses on the possible nature of such linkages and mentoring architecture. We advance that the current bottlenecks offer a great opportunity to leverage on cost-effective models to overcome the publication inertia, by evolving catalytic inter-group and collaborative processes. These processes can offer opportunity for more productive research and publications. |
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