GLOBAL HEALTH DYNAMICS IN OFFICIAL ASSOCIATION WITH THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK FOR CANCER TREATMENT AND RESEARCH

Evidence for cancer control principally comes from two sources: population-based cancer registries providing epidemiological data on cancer incidence, mortality and survival, and reports of research (basic, translational, clinical and economic) conducted in academic, clinical or commercial settings. In sub-Saharan Africa access to the former is improving with the support of the African Cancer Registry Network, but the latter remains problematic, with the lack of digitization making external access to valuable academic research particularly difficult. One project across five countries is trying to fill this gap by increasing access to locally published literature on cancer and by ensuring that it will be hosted in institutional repositories and made accessible globally. A concerted action by a high-level network of African librarians in five countries has aimed to change that paradigm by creating institutional repositories that are searchable by anyone from any location worldwide. These DIRs aim facilitate the dissemination of research output produced locally in the member countries of the Network of African Medical Librarians (NAML) as well as to the rest of the world. The ADHL project is implemented by NAML. It is locally led by medical librarians who, with the guidance of the principal investigators, have been collaborating and planning the project for several years. The Network comprises medical librarians from academic institutions in Kenya (Kenya Methodist University and University of Nairobi), Mali (Bamako University of Science and Technology), Nigeria (University of Ibadan), Zambia (University of Zambia) and Zimbabwe (University of Zimbabwe).