With the mission to improve, through research, the health and wealth of nations affected by conflict, experts from Southampton are establishing a new Sub-Saharan Africa Blast Injury Research Network to maximise the impact of research through engagement with in-country stakeholders across multiple sectors.
The Network hosts its first Blast Injury Workshop in South Africa today (27 March), in collaboration with the Blast Impact and Survivability Research Unit (BISRU) at the University of Cape Town.
The Network and wider research draws upon a unique trans-disciplinary collaboration between early career researchers, Dr Jack Denny within the Bioengineering Sciences Research Group in Engineering and Physical Science and Dr Rebecca Brown within the Clinical Informatics Research Unit (CIRU) in Medicine, with support of Professor James Batchelor and Dr Alex Dickinson.
The international workshop will welcome a multidisciplinary team of scientists, clinicians and academics from the UK and South Africa from both engineering and medical backgrounds. Participants also include colleagues from Zimbabwe who design personal protective equipment for humanitarian demining, and input from the non-governmental organisation, Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) and the demining charity, The HALO Trust.
Once established, the Network will continue to bring together nations and different stakeholders to work in partnership to address the totality of issues ranging from clearance and protection (engineering problem) to injury and social impact (health system and economic development).
Dr Denny said:
“Our vision is to improve the impact, effectiveness, fairness and relevance of blast injury research to address humanitarian civilian health issues caused by landmines, ERW and conflict.
“Investment into blast injury research, and appropriate methodologies, needs to be relevant to deliver the greatest overall positive impact.”
