Science in Tanzania

00:00:14.21 My name is Marina Njelekela. I come from Tanzania.
00:00:19.18 Tanzania is within East Africa and it is the house of
00:00:26.15 the highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro
00:00:29.22 and you are welcome to visit Tanzania and climb
00:00:32.13 Mount Kilimanjaro. I graduated from the only public
00:00:37.05 university in Tanzania, which is called the
00:00:40.14 Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Health Sciences
00:00:44.00 in 1993. And after that I continued working in different
00:00:50.01 hospitals in Tanzania until 1998 when I had
00:00:55.22 an opportunity to travel to Japan to pursue
00:00:59.24 my Ph.D. studies in Japan. I studied in Japan for
00:01:04.14 four and a half years and I completed my studies in 2003.
00:01:10.04 I received my Ph.D. in cardiovascular physiology. I'm currently a senior
00:01:16.15 lecturer and the chair of the Department of Physiology at
00:01:20.17 Muhimbili Medical University in Tanzania. Soon after the completion of my Ph.D.
00:01:28.05 in Japan, I returned home in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to join hands
00:01:34.11 with other academicians in the country to train medical doctors
00:01:39.15 in Tanzania. Currently, our doctor patient ratios is so bad to the range of
00:01:47.23 between 30,000 and 50,000 people per one doctor. So we really need
00:01:55.06 to train more doctors in Tanzania. This really was one of the forces, which
00:02:02.17 made me have this potential to go back in Tanzania.
00:02:06.22 However, after I started working in my university, being trained in Japan
00:02:12.08 in very high sophisticated type of research, I started to feel the challenges
00:02:18.23 of teaching and conducting basic science research. First of all,
00:02:24.19 I could not continue working in genetic studies which I was doing in Japan,
00:02:30.28 due to limitation in capacity in my university as well as due to
00:02:36.22 limitation in instruments and machines to conduct such high level of research.
00:02:42.18 So I tried to change my focus and focused more on epidemiological
00:02:51.01 research, which currently I've been working to since I returned home in 2003.
00:02:58.23 For example, currently I'm doing cardiovascular risk factor assessment
00:03:05.25 a type of research, such as assessing metabolic risk factors like glucose levels
00:03:14.02 as well as lipid profiles, and also evaluating or assessing some modifiable
00:03:21.28 risk factors such as dietary factors, smoking, as well as physical activity.
00:03:27.25 This type of research, which has led to publications in peer reviewed journals
00:03:33.02 has not been done very well in Tanzania in the previous years, and
00:03:38.08 to me it brings in another era of creating awareness among
00:03:43.22 the general population in Tanzania, on what are the risk factors
00:03:47.27 which may lead to non-communicable diseases, especially
00:03:51.06 cardiovascular disease in Tanzania. And also by conducting this type of
00:03:56.12 research, it will pave the way to more sophisticated research, for example
00:04:02.22 studying the genetic predisposition of these chronic diseases
00:04:06.20 among people of African descent, and see what are the improvements
00:04:11.25 which could be made. For example, if we find out that people are
00:04:17.00 sensitive to salt, then it will be easier for us as scientists to
00:04:21.29 advise people to protect themselves from eating high salt diets.
00:04:30.06 Apart from the limitation in research when I came back home,
00:04:34.14 another limitation, which I faced was the issue of teaching resources.
00:04:39.22 For example, when I went back home I found that there were
00:04:44.18 physiology books, but which were one or two editions older than
00:04:49.13 the books I was using in Japan. And this made teaching a bit difficult.
00:04:54.23 So it is very important I think for addressing these issues in terms of
00:05:02.09 collaborations. I have seen some of my young outstanding colleagues
00:05:08.15 who failed to come back to Africa, because they are wondering
00:05:12.17 what are they going to do after they receive this very high tech
00:05:17.00 research in a developed country. Personally, I don't blame
00:05:21.15 such a move, but I think there are ways in which we African researchers
00:05:27.08 could work it out with our partners in developed countries to address
00:05:32.23 the issue of improving basic science research in African universities.
00:05:37.29 The best way, I feel, to address this challenge is through partnerships
00:05:43.24 and collaborations. If we collaborate with universities in
00:05:49.02 Europe and the USA, we will build our capacity, but at the same time
00:05:54.01 we will share resources such as instruments and machines
00:05:57.28 to conduct basic science research. For example, in my university
00:06:02.11 we have started a collaboration with the Institute of Global Health
00:06:06.27 at the University of California - San Francisco, which has
00:06:11.12 facilitated us to review our old curriculum into a more competence-based
00:06:17.20 curriculum, which will lead to helping us to have a very good type of
00:06:26.10 medical education, and have well built or increased capacity in our students.
00:06:33.19 In addition to that, the Muhimbili University has also conducted
00:06:39.03 some few basic science research in various fields in biochemistry,
00:06:44.19 pharmacology, as well as microbiology, and this has
00:06:50.03 appeared in several peer reviewed articles in PubMed. So for example,
00:06:56.26 currently we are conducting HIV/AIDS vaccine trial in collaboration with
00:07:03.19 Karolinska University in Sweden. Apart from across continent collaborations,
00:07:11.27 I think within Africa collaborations is also important in pursing
00:07:16.21 basic science research and also inter-university collaborations because
00:07:22.19 you find in one university you have instruments and machines
00:07:26.15 belonging to one project, and if this could be shared across the university
00:07:31.03 by various basic science researchers, I think we can very much improve
00:07:35.22 our research capacity in basic sciences. So it's my plea to my
00:07:42.17 fellow scientists in Africa, as well as scientists in developed countries
00:07:46.18 that we really need to share across the continents, share across
00:07:52.00 universities, so that to build more the capacity of research in basic sciences
00:07:56.22 in Africa, which will further increase the number of academicians
00:08:02.00 working in African universities, and overall increasing
00:08:06.05 the whole output of basic science research in Africa.

This Talk

Speaker: Marina Alois Njelekela

Audience:

Student
Researcher

Recorded: June 2011

All Talks in Science and Society

Talk Overview

In this talk about science in Tanzania, Marina Alois Njelekela talks about her journey and strategies in redirecting her research to epidemiological studies and establishing collaborations to do exciting and important research in Tanzania.

Speaker Bio

Marina Alois Njelekela

Marina Njelekela received her MD from Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in Dar Es Salaam (MUHAS) and her PhD from Kyoto University. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at MUHAS and she was chairperson of the Medical Women of Tanzania Association for the last six years. Njelekela has received several awards for her… Continue Reading