A short general history of the MRC

Life after apartheid
The decline, if not the actual demise of apartheid, saw an increase in international co-operation. The re-instatement in 1991 of six postdoctoral bursaries of the Fogarty Center of the National Institutes of Health in the USA - a condition being that the bursaries be used for affirmative action - was rightly regarded as 'a major breakthrough'. However, dwindling finance was described by the president as "one of the most critical management questions currently facing the MRC". It was still hoped that Medtech would provide a solution.

Dr Van Heerden retired as President of the MRC at the end of 1992 and Dr Walter Prozesky was appointed to succeed him. The year saw the retrenchment and resignation of some 21 per cent of staff members, and the discontinuation (because of high cost and relatively low priority) of two major programmes: bilharzia field research, based in Nelspruit and Durban, and environmental health research based in Pretoria. In the interests of increased efficiency, rationalisation was also applied to other services. Significantly, Dr F. P. Retief recorded that "A developing country like South Africa needs a truly relevant and vibrant health care system geared towards the needs of all its communities".

In his first President's report (1992), Dr Walter Prozesky declared that the MRC had probably undergone more change in that year than in any other, to keep up with the pace of change in South Africa. Affirmative action was implemented as employment policy and staff composition had begun to move towards resembling the national population. The main thrusts of research during the previous two years were Essential Health Research (directed at the most urgent health problems and operated through national research programmes), Strategic Health Research (building research capacity and operating through universities), and Technology Development and Transfer, or developing contacts with industry for the creation and implementation of health technology.

Perhaps the most dramatic feature of 1992 was the increased communication with scientists and organisations in many other countries. It was predicted that an end to the acute political uncertainty that plagued South Africa would see the full development and implementation of the MRC's research programmes applied in partnership with neighbouring countries.

Change and turbulence continued throughout 1993, Dr Prozesky's first full year as President. The commercial extension of the MRC, Medtech, was finally proven to be financially unviable, and had to be liquidated at a cost to the council of R2,7 million. Indirect loss over the years undoubtedly was much greater. In the prevailing financial climate, characterised by diminished State funding, this was a severe blow, but the failed venture gave way to the more secure system of forming partnerships with existing commercial concerns. The fact that the MRC could survive this financial crisis, which disrupted and damaged its research effort in many spheres, was an indication of the organisation's fundamental soundness, and of the loyalty of its staff.

It was also an indication of a new direction. It was recognised that, in the past, research had too often emphasised the curiosity-driven impulse ("we wish to know") rather than the needs of the greater community.

In terms of a new holistic approach, the focus was to be on the actual health problem rather than on research methodology, and required the integration of financial, administrative and information management systems to allow for intensive project management. The installation of carefully planned computer networks made this approach possible for the first time.