Muhas Vice Chancellor, Prof Ephata Kaaya
The Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (Muhas) will hold its first three day international scientific conference beginning May 2, with the aim of exchanging research findings among various researchers in Tanzania and from around the world.
Muhas Vice Chancellor Prof Ephata Kaaya revealed this in Dar es Salaam yesterday; saying the most important thing will be to inform the Tanzanian community about the findings from the current and past health researches that have been conducted by the university and other researchers.
According to him, during the conference which will be attended by 300 participants from across the world, various researchers will present a total of 144 scientific research papers whereas the findings will be translated into policy and practice.
Prof Kaaya said the findings will also be linked with addressing health related Millennium Development Goals, emerging major health challenges and crises on health human resources.
“The main purpose of the conference will be to share, inform, learn and exchange research findings among various researchers from Tanzania and around the world so that people can learn from them,” he said.
He said presentations will range from; malaria management and control, health care financing, child and reproductive health, HIV vaccine trials, surveillance, ART therapy and its challenges, cancer screening and management.
Other are behavioural change communication and its challenges, disease and surveillance of drug resistance, health systems research including human resources for health challenges and quality of care, environmental degradation and conservation, nutritional disorders and enhancing professional medical practice.
The conference will be held in Dar es Salaam, under the theme “Health research towards poverty alleviation”. The theme has been deliberately chosen to emphasise the need of health research in solving communities’ health problems.
Prof Kaaya said the researches will lead to better delivery of health care, implementation of evidence based policies and best practices and supports as well as to facilitate the transfer of new skills and technology for better health services.
“As we all know, healthy population will inevitable lead into a more productive society that will eventually alleviate poverty,” he added.
Muhas as a health training institution was established in 1963 as a Dar es Salaam School of Medicine whereas the first Muhas scientific conference has therefore coincided with a series of activities to commemorate 50 years of its existence as well as the 50 years anniversary of the African Unity.
On February this year, Muhas was ranked the best university in the country by University Ranking Academic Performance (URAP) Centre due to the number of researches it has published hence became the first in Tanzania and the third in East Africa.
Other national universities that were ranked behind Muhas included the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) and Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) as second and third respectively.
