“We decided to give more formal structure to this research effort by compiling authoritative reports on national markets and key sectors.
 
“The success of our banking book was an eye-opener. We decided to maintain momentum by creating a continuing stream of authoritative reports. We knew there was great international appetite for reliable, up-to-the-minute data on African countries. That appetite may be even stronger than we first thought.”
 
Imara is committed to the facilitation of investment into Africa and in the last 15 months has twice brought international fund managers to Harare for on-the-spot assessments of Zimbabwean opportunities. It frequently collaborates with officials from various SSA countries to give in-depth briefings to investors in major centres such as London.
 
Tunmer adds: “We plan to publish an ongoing series of investment books and reports on a wide range of national markets, key sectors and listed companies.
 
“Once the base is established, we will look at six-monthly updates. We also plan to produce national editions of sectoral reports that will put the spotlight on a particular jurisdiction.”

Dale Nijoka, Global Oil and Gas Leader for Ernst & Young, says: “The oil and gas industry is facing some uncertainty right now.  Mixed economic data, cutbacks in government spending, potential repercussions of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the sovereign debt crisis in Europe are all contributing to a difficult outlook for the remainder of 2010.”
 
Oil prices are range-bound compared to recent years, oil prices have been remarkably constant. More modest consumption habits and weak developed economies have eased demand pressures, creating consistent prices in the US$70 to US$80 per barrel range for nearly a full year. In the absence of any supply shocks or a reversal of economic recovery, prices are expected to remain relatively stable in the short to medium term.
 
Natural gas economics set to remain challenging. North American gas fundamentals remain weak, driven by fairly weak demand and strong production growth. Globally, we have not seen the kind of demand growth some organizations are expecting for the year. Despite this, producers continue to invest substantially in unconventional gas plays, particularly shale, LNG liquefaction and regasification capacity, suggesting a more positive long-term outlook. However, there remain some challenges to overcome to realize the unconventional reserves potential in Europe and Asia, which means that it may not turn out to be a “game changer” for these regions.
 
Refining margins strengthen but further restructuring likely after a very difficult second half of 2009, refining margins have trended upwards and in many regions are back to where they were before the boom of 2005-2008. Nonetheless, additional refinery closures are likely in the US and Europe as new capacity comes online in Asia and the Middle East. Pressures remain on refiners to maintain liquidity and cash flow.
 
Winners and losers in the oilfield services sector, The Oilfield Services (OFS) sector faced a relatively weak economic environment in 2009, following the decline in upstream spending and downward pressures on utilization and day rates. However, after successfully adjusting to the new financial environment and beginning to show signs of recovery, the sector now has to deal with the repercussions of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.  Despite this, the prospects for the overall OFS sector are set to remain fair for some time yet, albeit there will be winners and losers. Spending by oil and gas companies is expected to increase in 2010 and signs of improvement are at hand as rig utilization rates have ticked modestly upward.
 

“Even though the events in the Gulf of Mexico have been difficult for parts of the OFS sector, ultimately we expect to see investment in equipment and resources to improve the safety and reliability of offshore and onshore operations. Broadly speaking, this is expected to financially benefit the oilfield services equipment manufacturers, whilst bolstering more technological advances,” said Nijoka.  
 
Heightened deal activity in Africa, James Newlands, Ernst & Young Oil & Gas Leader for Africa comments “There have been some notable oil discoveries in West Africa over the last six months.  This year will see an important milestone reached in Ghana with first oil production from the giant Jubilee field expected in the fourth quarter.   However, it is exploration success offshore East Africa that is attracting the interest of some of the larger international players.  Deal activity in East Africa, which is much less explored than West Africa, has picked up since the Windjammer gas discovery offshore Mozambique earlier this year.  ExxonMobil and BG have farmed into blocks across the border in Tanzania and AIM listed Cove Energy has a farm-in agreement for a stake in five Kenyan offshore exploration blocks.  Companies have shown that they are prepared to move quickly to secure acreage in emerging plays in Africa with the prize being the first large oil discoveries in deepwater East Africa.”
 
Global oil and gas transactions activity gathers pace M&A activity in the oil and gas sector during the first half of 2010 increased, with global deal value reaching almost US$135 billion – up almost 50% over the prior year. There were 420 deals announced through the first two quarters, versus 334 deals during the same period in 2009.  
 
Dale Nijoka comments: “Oil and gas M&A activity is starting to increase in the deal markets, and we expect that to carry through to the second half of 2010, particularly in emerging markets.  We have seen further consolidation in the OFS sector in the last six months and we expect this trend to continue for the remainder of 2010.  Deal valuations will, however, continue to be constrained by a lack of liquidity in debt markets and continued volatility in equity markets. Additionally, the appetite of a number of Asian National Oil Companies (NOCs) for acquisitions that give them access to strategic resources plays remains undiminished.”

The new LECO Pegasus 4 GCxGC-TOFMS (comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatograph combined with a time-of-flight mass spectrometer) has been commissioned at UP’s Separation Science Laboratory in the Department of Chemistry to gain better insight into the influence of trace components in synthetic diesel, and the application of such fuels in engines, turbines, and other devices.

The acquisition of this expensive equipment was made possible by financial support from Sasol Technology through joint research interest in the chemistry that underpins the physical properties of diesel fuels. The ability to obtain such chemical insight has only become feasible through the extreme analytical power of the GCxGC-TOFMS instrument, allowing for the identification and classification of literally thousands of compounds.

The initiative forms part of Sasol’s University collaboration initiative, a long term programme that supports the core objectives of world-class teaching and research capacity in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at selected South African Universities. This programme was initiated a few years ago and is already successfully established, using the framework of a hub-and-spoke collaboration philosophy, at several SA Universities.

Although primarily designed to protect Sasol’s competitive advantage of doing R&D in SA, this programme will have significant spin-offs benefiting South Africa in general. An important area related to Sasol’s fuels and lubricants research, is the rheological (study of the flow of substances under various conditions) and physical behavior of its synthetic fuels. The LECO Pegasus 4 GCxGC-TOFMS will enable scientists to make much more detailed analyses of how the more than 100 compounds that make up synthetic diesel fuel contribute to the likes of performance, viscosity, and lubricity of these fuels. This area of research is known as tribology.

With the rapid changes in engine technologies globally, it is important to fully characterize the composition of these fuels in order to exploit their unique benefits. Such academic expertise in South Africa exists at the University of Pretoria’s Department of Chemical Engineering under the leadership of Professor Philip de Vaal.

In-depth chemical characterization of fuels and lubricants is absolutely essential in understanding their rheological behavior. Analytical chemistry support (separation science), under the leadership of Professor Egmont Rohwer, is therefore another vital pillar in the sustainability of this programme. The support of this research area at UP hence involves both the disciplines of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry.

The ability to identify specific chemical compounds in extremely complicated mixtures will also help the University of Pretoria in other non-petrochemical research fields, including air and water pollution, forensic toxicology, and aroma analysis. In all these areas the LECO GCxGC-TOFMS will be used in combination with other unique analytical instrumentation and techniques developed at the UP Separation Science laboratories.

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Although there are signs that consumer spending trends have started to improve (or at least to stabilise), the rating agency does not envisage changing the industry sector outlook to positive in the near term.

“Moody’s does not anticipate a marked pick-up in demand for the global beverages industry in 2010, although volume performance should improve after a very challenging 2009. However, regional differences remain: a decline in volumes continues in most mature, developed markets such as the US and Western Europe, whilst Asia and Latin America have shown more
resilience, supporting top-line growth for companies exposed to thoseregions,” says Yasmina Serghini-Douvin, a Paris-based Moody’s AssistantVice President-Analyst.

Moody’s observes that Eastern European countries, including Russia, have experienced slower-than-expected economic growth which is projected to only gradually recover in H2 2010. The rating agency also notes that business conditions in Japan have stabilised, although domestic growth opportunities in that country remain limited.

Moody’s predicts that volumes will likely remain soft in 2010 across all segments of the global beverage industry, although the rating agency believes that volume trends have already reached a trough. Nonetheless, Moody’s highlights that governments are seeking to wipe out national deficits via excise duty on alcoholic beverages, and cautions that the tightened regulatory environment in Europe — where a number of duty increases on alcoholic beverages came into effect in January 2010 — will
create an additional burden for the industry.

Moody’s expects corporate activity to continue across the global beverage industry in the next 12 to 18 months, although not on the scale of 2007-2008. Recently, the North American market witnessed significant developments from leading soft beverage companies which led Moody’s to take rating actions. The Coca-Cola Company (rated Aa3, stable) and PepsiCo (Aa3, stable) reshaped their relationships with some of their key bottlers, as well as with others in the industry such as Dr Pepper Snapple. Overall, the rating agency believes that beverage companies will maintain prudent financial policies overall, with moderate returns to shareholders and investments.

This Moody’s Industry Outlook titled “Global Beverage Industry Outlook — Volume pressures ease but focus on costs and prudent financial policies continue overall” is available on www.moodys.com.

This series aims to:* Raise awareness of the relevance and importance of traceability* Highlight important aspects and associated subject matter* Help manufacturers and distributors who are proposing to implement or improve traceability systems to make sound investments in sub-systems that work together.

This series aims to
* Raise awareness of the relevance and importance of traceability
* Highlight important aspects and associated subject matter
* Help manufacturers and distributors who are proposing to implement or improve traceability systems to make sound investments in sub-systems that work together rather than making inappropriate investments in sub-systems that are unable to inter-operate
* Provide a resource to manufacturers that can be used as the basis for a checklist for traceability system implementation

An unsafe product scenario
To set the scene, consider the hypothetical scenario of a bottle of flavoured milk. The bottle has a batch number and expiry date printed on it. The label says that its ingredients comprise low fat milk, sucrose, cocoa powder, stabilisers, permitted flavourants and colourants. In the event that the manufacturer investigates a consumer complaint and becomes aware that this batch of flavoured milk is unsafe, the manufacturer should be able to precisely identify the source of each of its ingredients and the container.
The ingredients label on our bottle includes the term “permitted colourants”. What were the actual colourants used to manufacture the contents of this bottle of flavoured milk? There may have been more than one colourant used to achieve the required colour. The manufacturer needs to have this detail archived for fast and accurate retrieval. For simplicity, assume that only one colourant was used and the manufacturer of the flavoured milk identifies that this was contaminated. The manufacturer may have more than one supplier of this colourant. What was the lot number of the colourant? Who supplied the colourant used in this bottle of flavoured milk? Perhaps the colourant was not supplied by the primary producer but by an importer or distributor. If there is a problem with this colourant, can the importer rapidly identify his supplier of this colourant? Can his supplier (let us assume that this is the primary producer of the colourant) identify the suppliers of the ingredients that went into this lot of this colourant? These suppliers may be a mix of industrial producers and farms. If the substance is an agricultural product, we might want to ask to what pesticide treatments this particular crop was exposed.

There is another gotcha here. Having found that there is a problem with this particular lot of colourant, is each organisation in its supply chain able to identify where other parts of this lot went? Is it necessary to retest and/or recall other products?

This is a very simple example. We started with a bottle of flavoured milk and have only brushed the surface of tracing the provenance of a single ingredient. However, it helps to illustrate that traceability requires a continuity of accurate data capture and record keeping from primary producer through to retailer.

What is traceability?
Broadly speaking, traceability refers to the ability to trace a substance through all stages of the supply and manufacturing chains.

Formal definitions of traceability
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a world-wide federation of national standards bodies that promotes the development of standardisation and international standards for a wide range of products. ISO 9000 guidelines are quality management system standards. The ISO 9000:2000 Guidelines define traceability as the “ability to trace the history, application or location of that which is under consideration.”

From a food perspective, European Union (EU) Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 defines traceability as “The ability to trace and follow a food, feed, food-producing animal or substance intended to be, or expected to be incorporated into a food or feed, through all stages of production, processing and distribution.”

Why implement traceability?
There are many factors that motivate the implementation of traceability systems. These include:
* Supply management improvements
* Regulation
* Voluntary adoption of standards
* Safety and quality
* Brand value
* Expanded market / market share
* Economic / Profitability
* Customer imposed requirement

Supply management improvements
The successful implementation of traceability systems helps to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the supply chain. Resolution of these reduces distribution costs. Traceability and tracking yield productivity gains resulting from improved marking, data capture and data retrieval. Stock-turn ratios are improved as a result of faster order fulfilment and more consistent delivery lead times. Improved stock rotation results in reduced losses from past sell-by date and age degraded products.

Regulation
In certain industries and trading blocs traceability is mandated by regulation.

In most countries an appropriate governing body requires the use of suitable traceability systems in pharmaceutical and medical device manufacture and distribution. In South Africa the Medicines Control Council administers this. In the USA this task falls under the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

South African Government Notice R908 of 2003/06/27 requires owners of food handling enterprises to have in place “a HACCP system fully implemented to the satisfaction of the relevant authorised health authority in relation to the foodstuffs under consideration…”.

The US National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF) lists a set of prerequisites for HACCP  (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) implementation. One of these is that “All raw materials and products should be lot-coded and a recall system in place so that rapid and complete traces and recalls can be done when a product retrieval is necessary.”

EU Regulation (EC) 2065/2001 concerns the compulsory labelling of fish and requires traceability to catch area, vessel identification, capture method and more. Similar regulations are in place in many countries to address sustainability of natural resources, food safety and the humane treatment of living creatures.

In member countries of the EU Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 mandates traceability in the production, processing and distribution of food and animal feed products from primary production to final consumer. When it was promulgated, this requirement logically appeared to extend to manufacturers outside the EU who export such products for consumption in the EU. Subsequently, Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 confirmed that “Food imported into the Community is to comply with the general requirements laid down in Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 or satisfy rules that are equivalent to Community rules.”

In December 2004 the FDA issued its final rules on maintaining food traceability records under the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness Act of 2002. In terms of this all companies that manufacture and transport food products must maintain records that identify the immediate previous source and subsequent recipient of the food they distribute. The regulations apply to entities that “manufacture, process, pack, transport, distribute, receive, hold, or import food”, although farms and restaurants are excluded. The FDA can request shipment records when it “has a reasonable belief that an article of food is adulterated and presents a threat of serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals.” Entities must make records available within 24 hours of official request, or face civil action in federal court. Failure to maintain the necessary documentation can result in criminal charges.

The Bioterrorism Act requires those entities that pack, process and export food to the USA comply with certain requirements. These relate principally to registration with the US government, a process of prior notice of exports to the USA, and a requirement to maintain records to enable traceability of food supplied.

Voluntary adoption of standards
Frequently organisations or whole industries in a region will elect to adopt an established set of non-mandatory standards in order to help them achieve their manufacturing and profitability objectives and to benefit from the synergies of this approach.

European Article Numbering (EAN) standards and Supply Chain management solutions firmly entrench traceability principles along with tracking, tracing, marking and data exchange standards.
The SA Guide to GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice for Medicines in South Africa) is another example of a standard or guideline that requires traceability. An extract from section 1.3.2 reads: “The basic requirements and objectives of Good Manufacturing Practice are as follows:
(i)            records of production, control and distribution which enable the complete history of a batch to be traced, are retained in a comprehensible and accessible form
(k)           system is available to recall any batch of product from sale or supply”

Safety and quality
Traceability systems result in reduced costs associated with recall and litigation and improved response times to product quality problems. The cost of recall can be limited to specific batches or to product manufactured by specific operators or at particular manufacturing stations. Without suitable systems in place there may be significant costs involved in bringing in outside auditors to work through manufacturing documentation to try and establish an audit trail so that contaminated lots can be identified.
Organisations are coming to view traceability systems as an essential part of their risk management toolbox.

A brand is an immensely valuable asset. For brands like Coca-Cola or Perrier brand values are measured in billions of dollars. Both of these brands have suffered damage in Europe as a result of product recalls. When problems that require a product recall occur, brand value will suffer least where systems facilitate rapid withdrawal by the manufacturer and supply chain before such product reaches the final consumer.

A Product that meets internationally recognised compliance guidelines establishes higher recognition from customers and suppliers, thus building brand value.

Brand value is an “after incident” victim. A brand suffers damage when an unsafe product comes into the market.

Perrier only started to return to break-even in 2003, after the 1990 recall of 280 million bottles of water in which trace amounts of the carcinogen, benzene, were found. That single incident cost Perrier almost US$200 million, marred its image and opened up the niche market that it had dominated to a large number of new arrivals.The ability to identify and pull contaminated product in a targeted way means that harm to brand value can be limited and consumers can continue to purchase the brand with confidence.

In the 2003 Pick ‘n Pay incident, turnover was actually enhanced through competent recall and well-managed consumer communication. A survey conducted at the time by Research Surveys found that “65% of respondents who were aware of the food scare feel that Pick ‘n Pay have handled the incident to the best of their ability. Twenty four percent felt that it was handled fairly well, but that it could have been handled better, and only12% of those polled felt the retailer had not handled the incident very well.“

Expanded market / market share
Business are achieving increase turnover and premium pricing as a result of changed consumer perception concerning intangible or hard-to-identify product and brand characteristics that rely on traceability for their credibility. Dolphin-friendly tuna fishing, organic foods, non-genetically modified foods, vitamin-enriched foods and beverages, pharmaceuticals not tested on animals and fair-trade products are just some examples. Without credible traceability systems and audits these differentiators would have limited influence on consumer preferences.

Many buyers and consumers prefer products that have been manufactured under well-defined, controlled and recorded conditions. With appropriate manufacturing records in place, quality becomes another selling tool.
If manufacturers are unable to meet new regulations then their markets diminish. Conversely new markets open up if suitable control systems are in place.

Economic
All the above factors have a significant impact on an organisation’s turnover and profitability.
Customer imposed requirement
Manufacturers, distributors, retailers and consumers are requiring their suppliers to have verifiable traceability systems in place for many of the reasons listed.

Where does traceability fit in my process?
It is clear from the definitions of traceability that this is an end-to-end process. Whether you are an importer, a manufacturer, a distributor or a logistics operation, your traceability starts with materials receiving (Who is this coming from? What is it? What lot number? What expiry date? What sample metrics?), continues through manufacture / aggregation / bulk break (In which plant or manufacturing area was it manufactured? Which lots of which components went into which manufactured lots? What are the sample metrics of the manufactured item? What is its expiry date?) and is a necessary part of materials despatch (To whom was each lot of the manufactured item sent? When? On what waybill / delivery note / invoice?).
What are the implications of my implementing traceability?
In order to implement traceability successfully within an enterprise you need to capture the necessary information at source in an accurate, efficient and reliable manner. Traceability needs to embrace “real world” / “on event” capture of information as opposed to pre-emptive / post-event transaction capturing. It does not involve trying to capture information on what we planned to use, nor on what we should have used, but on what we actually used.

This may mean agreement on suitable labelling, marking or identification specifications (bar coding, RFID…) and lot numbering systems between your business and your suppliers. Or it may mean the application of your own internal lot numbering methodology and re-labelling at material receiving.
It may also mean the introduction of bar code readers or RFID readers and marking systems within your manufacturing processes in order to record component usage and the use of bar code printers or RFID writers to mark manufactured and semi-manufactured product.
With such procedures in place you will need systems to archive and retrieve the captured information.

What are the implications of my failing to implement traceability?
According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), in the period 1990 to 2003, multi-ingredient foods, where the contaminated ingredient was not identified, were linked to 601 food-poisoning outbreaks and 18,006 illnesses. There is growing consumer concern and reaction to this failure to identify contaminated ingredients.
The wide-scale introduction of regulations enforcing the use of traceability systems and increasing consumer awareness mean that manufacturers who do not embrace traceability can expect:

* Non-compliance notices in the public domain
* Fines
* Diminishing market shares
* Closure
* Litigation
In forthcoming articles…
Forthcoming articles will address points to consider when planning a traceability project, such as:
* Lot and batch numbering
* Marking
* Equipment and software selection
and process-specific suggestions relating to:
* Materials receiving, sampling and inspection
* Manufacturing
* Dispatch
* Stocktake
and more.

References
BusinessWeek. The Global Brand Scoreboard. 2 August 2004.
Center for Science in the Public Interest. Outbreak alert! 4 April 2004.
EAN International. Traceability Management tools for agriculture, food and beverage products. February 2004.
European Parliament and the Council of the European Union Regulation (EC) No 2065/2001 of 22 October 2001.
European Parliament and the Council of the European Union Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 of 28 January 2002.
European Parliament and the Council of the European Union Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 of 29 April 2004.
ISO (2000). ISO 9000:2000. Quality Management Standards.
Research Surveys: How will the poison scare affect shoppers?
RSA Department of Health Government Notice R.908 of 27 June 2003.
RSA Medicines Control Council. Good Manufacturing Practice for Medicines in Douth Africa. January 2004.
US Food and Drug Administration Fact Sheet on FDA’s New Food Bioterrorism Regulation: Establishment and Maintenance of Records. December 2004.
US National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods. Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Principles and Application Guidelines adopted August 14, 1997.

About the authors
Andrew Ashton has qualifications in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and commerce.  He has worked in and been providing automation solutions to the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries for the past 27 years. He enjoys the challenge of helping clients to integrate their business management systems with front-end applications that facilitate traceability.

Marc Ashton has organised conferences focusing on food factory floor operations and systems and is a regular contributor to business-to-business publications in the food, pharmaceutical, logistics and IT arenas. Marc makes a point of keeping abreast of trends in the food and pharmaceutical industries both locally and internationally.
Both are directors of ProLoCon (Pty) Ltd, a company that manufactures software for formulation management, industrial dispensing, shop floor capture of traceability data and logistics.

Traceability in Manufacturing and Distribution
The first in a series of articles covering the important and topical subject of traceability.

Cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension and stroke and metabolic diseases such as obesity and diabetes are classified as non-communicable diseases.  This group of diseases together with communicable diseases (such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria), perinatal and maternal illnesses and injury-related deaths are contributing to a quadruple burden of disease in South Africa and sub Saharan Africa.

The SA Medical Research Council today announce the official launch of the newly established national collaborative research programme on cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Several initiatives have been proposed to deal with this growing problem.

One such is the National Collaborative Research Programme (NCRP) on Cardiovascular and Metabolic disease to be established under the aegis of the Medical Research Council (MRC).   The mission of the NCRP is ‘to formulate and apply an integrated programme of research and capacity development in order to improve the prevention, understanding, detection and management of cardiovascular and metabolic disorders in South Africa,’ says Dr Niresh Bhagwandin, Executive Manager: Research Initiatives at the MRC.

Prof Bongani Mayosi, Head of the Medical School at UCT said that against the background of compelling evidence, there is no doubt that a highly trained cadre of researchers is the key ingredient to tackle health problems in general.  However the challenge is to integrate and harness all of this talent into a cohesive programme of research.  And this needs to be done quickly.

Acting President of the MRC, Dr Ali Dhansay said that this launch is the culmination of two MRC sponsored workshops of key stakeholders and leading cardiovascular and metabolic researchers in South Africa and abroad.  This process resulted in a business plan for the NCRP which was approved by the MRC Board in 2009.

He said that the key objectives of the NCRP on Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease are:

* to understand the mechanisms and measure the burden of cardiovascular and metabolic disease;
* to generate knowledge and translate the evidence into policy and practice;
* to develop and evaluate interventions for the prevention, detection, and management of cardiovascular and metabolic disease;
* to utilise conditions and challenges that are unique to the South African environment;
* to develop research capacity and interdisciplinary collaboration and,
* to develop and adopt new health technological approaches to cardiovascular and metabolic disease.

In keeping with these objectives, the overarching priority of the NCRP will be to build a strong cadre of cardiovascular and metabolic researchers and a strong epidemiological base at a national level.

This will be achieved through the four ‘pillars’ of the NCRP, namely,

* Establishing Epidemiological Studies to ‘track and fast-track’ the epidemiological transition at a population, clinical, laboratory, and behavioural levels;
* Providing Research Career Development funding for doctoral, postdoctoral, mid career fellowships, and Research Chairs;
* Creating a Research Support Programme through biostatistical and epidemiological support for ongoing projects to improve the quality and outputs of existing work and,
* Supporting a Research Training Programme through short-courses, workshops like the one being held here, seminars, and conferences.

The announcement of who will lead this national programme will be made soon.

For more information contact: Julian Jacobs on 082 454 4902.

By the SA Medical Research Council