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The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has ended its ban on funding South African research projects, opening the door for local scientists to apply for its grants once more.
South African researchers, who are at the forefront of global research into HIV and tuberculosis, have historically been the biggest recipients of NIH grants awarded outside the US. But their world was thrown into turmoil last year after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order halting all foreign aid and assistance to South Africa, citing concerns about the government’s “egregious actions” against white Afrikaner farmers and Israel. Research units have been forced to jettison some projects and retrench staff whose salaries were covered by grant funding.
At the time, the NIH interpreted Trump’s directive to include its grants. NIH director Jay Bhattacharya has now changed tack, offering South African researchers a desperately needed lifeline. The loss of NIH funding, with the termination of other grants such as those administered by the US Agency for International Development, cost South Africa almost $450m, according to Medical Research Council president Ntobeko Ntusi.
In a memo sent to staff, a copy of which Business Day has seen, Bhattacharya justifies the change in policy on the grounds that NIH grants are distinct from foreign aid and assistance. Not only has the US Congress explicitly authorised the NIH to conduct international research collaboration, but foreign aid laws such as the Foreign Assistance Act do not govern the NIH, he said.
“Because NIH grants are distinguished from ‘foreign aid or assistance … meritorious research projects located in South Africa are permitted to proceed …’”, he said.
While the change has come too late for some projects, it offers an opportunity to restore some of the capacity that had been lost, said Linda Gail Bekker, director of the Desmond Tutu HIV research centre at UCT. “I see this as a lifeline to rebuild, but it’s a long and unpredictable road,” she said.
There is, however, a sting in the tail: Bhattacharya said scientists from South Africa will no longer be eligible for research training and career development grants from the NIH’s Fogarty International Centre (FIC). That’s because South Africa is an upper middle-income country and a member of the G20, he said in the memo.
The restoration of NIH grant funding to South Africa was “great news”, but terminating Fogarty support for South African researchers was extremely disappointing, said Salim Abdool Karim, director of the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
“The FIC’s goal is international research, so to tie its hands and say it cannot have any association with South Africa is very unusual and frankly does not make sense,” said Karim.
The FIC had provided early career grants to scientists in South Africa who went on to lead ground-breaking HIV and TB studies that helped shape the global response to these diseases, he said.
Ntusi said excluding South Africa from the Fogarty programme would have far-reaching implications. “Many of the postgraduate students and early career scientists trained on Fogarty training programmes in South Africa were from the rest of the continent. This is a major loss for Africa and not [just] South Africa,” he said.
Ntusi led a fund-raising exercise last year that secured R400m from the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, matched by an equal amount from the National Treasury.
Business Day
