On Wednesday 7th March, over five hundred visitors from Farafenni and the surrounding areas joined the staff of MRC Farafenni Field Site to celebrate 25 years of world class field research and community partnership in the North Bank Division and 60 years of MRC’s presence in The Gambia. They were joined by two members of the MRC Executive Management Board - Professor Tumani Corrah and Professor Sarah Rowland-Jones, MRC programme heads and other senior staff from MRC Fajara, Basse and Keneba.
The programme, named ‘Strengthening Community Partnerships’, focused primarily on Farafenni Field Site’s contributions to malaria research. The event was devised and coordinated by Dr Sam Dunyo (Farafenni Field Site Head), Dr Momodou Jasseh (Demographer and Head of Farafenni Demographic Surveillance System), Mr Musa Jawara (Entomologist), Mr Pa Chebo Saine (Farafenni Field Site Manager) and Mr Ignatius Baldeh (Laboratory Manager). The programme featured a number of presentations and demonstrations including Pyramax – a new drug combination against malaria; MRC/University of Durham (UK) collaborative projects on anti larval measures for malaria control in the Gambia, the STOPMAL house screening project and the use of PCR to differentiate mosquitoes; the Farafenni Demographic Surveillance System; the composition and functions of blood, and entomological research on mosquitoes and malaria. AFPRC Hospital General Hospital and the District Health Team also presented posters.

The morning session was devoted to the senior secondary school science students of Farafenni and the North Bank Division. Activities in the afternoon included the official opening of MRC Farafenni’s new ‘bantaba’, which will serve as a cafeteria and meeting place for staff. The afternoon’s official Open Day opening ceremony was well attended by the dignitaries of the region and included the award of certificates of appreciation for a number of retired village reporters who have worked faithfully alongside the MRC in Farafenni for many years. The ceremony was enlivened by a drama presentation by local women on the importance of blood sampling to maintaining good health, and MRC Farafenni’s Pateh Bah did an excellent job of translating all the proceedings in to the local languages.

MRC (UK) The Gambia is the UK’s largest investment in medical research in the tropics, focusing on the development and testing of interventions to reduce the burden of diseases in developing countries. Working in partnership with the Department of State for Health for well over half a century, MRC has contributed to improving health for millions of people in the developing world through various interventions, including the development of vaccines now routinely used in the national immunisation programmes in Africa. This success in The Gambia has been built on a true and dynamic partnership with the Department of State for Health; the close relationship facilitates the MRC’s work across The Gambia whilst providing some support to Government.

MRC Farafenni Field Site enjoys an outstanding relationship with the people of Farafenni and, as a result, Farafenni’s research into malaria in particular, has made the town a household name in the world of tropical medical infectious disease research.

The work on malaria started under the late Professor Sir Ian McGregor as far back as the 1950s in Keneba, at a time when international interest in malaria research was waning, due to the prevailing optimism that the disease would soon be eradicated through the use of drugs and insecticides. MRC’s tenacity to malaria research has been vindicated, as the disease remains one of the foremost killers in sub-Saharan Africa. Current MRC studies remain at the forefront of the subject with major contributions in immunology, genetics, clinical management, epidemiology and various interventions at population level including chemo-prophylaxis, insecticide treated bednets, the microbial larvicide trial and malaria vaccine trials. This broad approach encompassing laboratory and clinical science, together with public health interventions, has only been possible because of the special attributes of MRC in The Gambia and its outstanding relationship with the Government and the people.

Farafenni is the home of the internationally acclaimed research project into the use of insecticide treated bednets, pioneered by Professor Brian Greenwood over twenty years ago, and it has been acknowledged as one of the most effective public health interventions in the fight against malaria. The nets, treated with safe biodegradeable pyrethroid insecticides, protect people from malaria by reducing their exposure to malaria infected mosquito bites. In another study in 1989, it was shown that the use of insecticide treated nets resulted in a 63 per cent reduction in deaths from all causes in children under five years.