Summer 2006
From the Chair
Science in school
How to communicate for business success
Science communication -the African way
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Free access medical journals
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Stempra newsletter
Science communication – the African way.
Getting editorial into one of the national newspapers is not a problem. You might just have to pop down to their offices to give them a hand laying out the pages though. This is just one of many challenges you face if you are a science communicator working for the Medical Research Council at its laboratories in The Gambia. Newspapers are a useful way of communicating your science to the public – but only some of the public. Challenge number two is that two-thirds of the population can’t read…
The reason for MRC’s presence in The Gambia is literally nuts. Back in the days when the sun never set on the British Empire, The Gambia was a major source of peanuts (peanuts still make up a large part of the county’s exports). In 1948, the MRC set up a field station just outside the capital, Banjul, and has been here ever since. The MRC in The Gambia today employs around 750 staff from around 20 countries around the world.
Much of the work that takes place in the five field sites is on tropical diseases such as malaria and TB, and on HIV/AIDS. The work ranges from developing pesticides for mosquito larvae to a wide range of clinical trials, including one recently that has led to the elimination of Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) disease, an important cause of childhood meningitis.
I visited The Gambia back in April as part of a communications audit. Despite the example at the start of this piece, many of the communications challenges they face have similarities to those the UK community has to deal with.
While public recognition of the MRC is not a problem in the Gambia (the MRC clinical services treat tens of thousands of patients every year, as well as providing assistance through the Gambia’s own health infrastructure – everyone knows the MRC and their white landrovers) similar issues to do with providing the right kind of information during and after clinical trials, the need to communicate our messages about partnership working with other organisations and the use of language when talking to lay audiences (in this case the Gambian villagers) arose.
What was encouraging was the scientists’ acknowledgement that communicating with the public was an essential part of their jobs. Perhaps there’s a few lessons the UK could learn from a tiny country on the West African coast.
Simon Wilde
More on the MRC Gambia Unit at www.mrc.gm
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