SA researchers are scrambling to find alternative sources of funding as fears mount that grants from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) are about to be axed.
The NIH is the biggest funder of medical research in SA, providing grants to projects at the SA Medical Research Council (MRC) and many of SA’s top universities. Much of the work focuses on HIV and tuberculosis but the NIH also funds research on noncommunicable diseases.
The US news site Science reported last week NIH acting director Matthew Memoli had instructed staff to provide a list of SA-related grants, prompting fears they were about to be cancelled. A similar instruction preceded the termination of grants involving topics US President Donald Trump’s administration does not support such as transgender health and vaccine hesitancy.
“There is ... an assault on science,” said MRC chief scientific officer Glenda Gray, who is also the principal investigator of the Brilliant consortium, a multi-country network of scientists working on HIV vaccine development.
“The only place where we can definitively answer questions about HIV prevention, treatment, cure and microbicides in SA. Disinvesting in SA means we won’t have the answers that could contribute to both global and local science,” she said in a webinar hosted by the Academy of Science of SA (Assaf) on Wednesday.
SA has been central to global efforts to develop HIV prevention tools and improve treatments because it has a high prevalence of the disease, a strong regulatory system and well-established clinical trial infrastructure.
The scientific community needs to persuade government and the private sector of the investment case for science, said Gray. “There is a strong correlation between scientific output and GDP. To not invest in science is to not invest in the growth of our GDP,” she said.
Trump’s administration has already stopped all US Agency for International Development (USAID) research grants to SA, torpedoing a clinical trial that was about to start testing a candidate HIV vaccine and another testing HIV prevention methods in women.
Trump’s administration has also terminated all USAID grants provided to HIV/Aids organisations via the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pefpar). Adding to the anxiety is an executive order signed by Trump February 7 freezing most aid to SA over it’s “egregious actions”, which Trump said included "“unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners”.
More recently, the Trump administration cancelled $400m in NIH grants to US universities Columbia over what it described as antisemitic harassment on its campus.
A sword now hangs over the extensive research enterprise the NIH has supported in SA for the past 30 years. Scientific careers, laboratory infrastructure, and the relationships scientists have built with communities who participate in clinical trials are all at risk.
Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute director Helen Rees expressed disappointment there had been little response to date from the private sector and high net worth individuals.
“I’m not seeing a big mobilisation of funds to replace the Pepfar shortfall [and] I haven’t seen much conversation around what are already shortfalls for research and which may become worse.
“I’m not sure that the private sector necessarily understands the value of research and innovation — it’s key to the development of economies,” she said.
MRC president Ntobeko Ntusi said no single partner in the global health environment could readily fill the void left by the US.
“We need to look to Europe, Asia, the private sector and philanthropy,” he said.
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