The launch of the Global Report on Infectious Diseases of Poverty by WHO/TDR took place in Brussels on April 17th at the European Commission’s Conference on Innovation in Healthcare Without Borders.  It was followed by a lively discussion during which the Executive Director of INDEPTH Network, Osman Sankoh made a passionate call on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to be seen to more directly support national health research. This, he said, would ensure that these countries ‘have greater ownership of the research’ and therefore be more committed to implementing recommendations from that research.

Osman’s contribution re-enforced one of the suggested strategies in the report:  “Country Ownership of Research”.  He preceded his comments on the report with an introduction of the Network and HDSS work and emphasized the relevance of the report to INDEPTH, highlighting the fact that its references touch on previous work published by INDEPTH colleagues.  He further called for a 'stretching of arms' by the infectious disease researchers and those in Non-Communicable Diseases so that “a bridge between these two fields could be achieved in a way that we can have the tools to better understand the multiple burden of diseases in many LMICs”.

In launching the report, Marie-Paule Kieny, Assistant Director-General of WHO introduced the goals and the proposed agenda for action.  This was followed by comments from the following four panelists:

• Line Matthiessen, European Commission’s Director-General for Research and Innovation who gave reflections on how the report could be used to identify global health research issues;

• Hassan Mshinda, Director-General for the Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), Tanzania also a former INDEPTH Board Chair and Centre leader who focused on how the report could be used in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) using Tanzania as an example.

• Hannah Akuffo from the Swedish Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) commented on how funders could use the report and how INDEPTH, ESSENCE and EDCTP could act. Specifically she called on WHO and other agencies to support INDEPTH's great work.

• Lenore Manderson of Monash University, Australia talked about the processes that led to the report.

• Garry Aslanyan, WHO/TDR, was the moderator for the session.