Le journal de l'IRD
n° 43 January-February-March 2008
Translator: Nicholas Flay
Scientific production is concentrated in a
small number of universities which stand
out from a mushrooming of higher education institutions whose numbers have soared over the past years.
There are some characteristics common to
the region as a whole. Research has no
well-defined function and the academic
institutions are isolated from the rest of
society and usually disconnected from the
world of industry. The academic system’s
research capacity (the favoured place for
scientific activity) is restricted by an explosion in the number of students. Unemployment among qualified people and
the “brain drain” are a strong reality.
o fulfil the country’s engagements
made under the Kyoto Protocol,
in 2007 France had to provide national
land use statistics, with particular focus
on forest cover. French Guiana is of
prime significance in this respect, with
its 8 million hectares of forest. The
short operating time available precluded a complete ground-level survey,
therefore the only feasible operational
solution was to use satellite imagery.
The land use mosaic produced by IRD’s
Space unit gave the first recorded
coverage of the whole surface of
Guiana, showing the forest and the
areas cleared for agriculture or goldpanning. The resulting map and the
methodology applied by the unit
“Espace et l’Inventaire forestier national” were presented at the conference
of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) held in
December 2007 in Bali (Indonesia).
The European project ESTIME (Evaluation of
Science, Technology and Innovation capabilities in the Mediterranean countries), piloted by the IRD, recently completed a state-ofthe-art report on the science and
technology capabilities of eight Mediterranean countries, research partners of the
European Union (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria,
Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and
Palestinian Territories). The programme,
founded on a common will to bring the two
research spheres closer together, was run
for three years. It employed a range of projects and a variety of approaches and resulted in many publications. A picture emerged
of contrasting situations, but the report
opens up lines of approach towards improved integration of research.
I
n North-West Africa, the public institutions, recently set up, are solid and
governments support research, expecting
in return a contribution to modernization
of the economy and society. Tunisia and
Morocco recently increased their national
research budgets with the aim of coming
closer to, reaching or, in the case of Tunisia,
even overtaking the mythical figure of 1%
of GNP, comparable with that of the
Southern Europe countries.
In Syria, Jordan and the Palestinian territories, the tendency is for research to be
strongly in the hands of the State and for
delegation of the function of education
and research to private institutions.
A blossoming scientific
production
p. 7 Research
Pathocenosis and emergence of transmissible diseases
he concept of pathocenosis provides a vision of the whole system of “pathological states within a given population, at a specific time and place”. It postulates that the frequency and distribution of each disease depend among other things on the frequency and
distribution of other diseases present in the particular society. This implies the interplay of
complex relationships and dynamics – possibly symbiotic, antagonistic or inconsequential –
between diseases.
The concept provides a suitable framework for examining the emergence, resurgence or expansion of infectious diseases. It highlights the interdependence between the diseases that occur
in a population, at a given time and in a given area. A multidisciplinary, multi-centre programme, financed by the French Agence Nationale de la
Recherche, is using pathocenosis as a research hypothesis applied to disease dynamics. It focuses its attention
on pathologies with characteristics that signal emergence or re-emergence: the hantavirus diseases; Carré’s
disease in the lion Panthera leo (based on data from
South Africa); viral haemorrhagic disease and myxomatosis in the rabbit in France; dengue fever and Japanese
encephalitis in Thailand; and leishmaniosis in Tunisia.
p. 1 News
Franco-American alliance
for development
O
n 22 January 2008, the William and
Flora Hewlett Foundation, the
French Agence Inter-établissements de
Research pour le Développement (AIRD),
IRD and the Agence Française pour le
Développement (AFD) signed a protocol
agreement for a sum of 2 400 000€. The
foundation is contributing half of this
amount, devoted to research on “the economic effects of reproductive health and
population dynamics in francophone SubSaharan Africa”.
p. 5 Partners
The South confronts complexity
© IRD/M. Le Bolé
p.10 Research
Tuberculosis
The varied complexions
of coral waters
High-priority combat
he origin of
the discoloured waters
that occur in the
tropical oceans,
known
since
time immemorial, has been little studied up to
now. A large-scale project, conducted in
New Caledonia by IRD scientists, has uncovered the mystery of the factors responsible: the events are the work of marine cyanobacteria. These organisms develop
naturally. They are toxic yet they can contribute to the combat greenhouse effect.
T
he IRD’s tuberculosis programme, conducted in Sub-Saharan Africa, assesses
the new approaches to patient health care,
new compounds and new diagnostic tools
for halting the disease’s progress and tendency towards resistance. The scheme is a
contribution in response to one of the major
priorities set by WHO.
Improvement of the tuberculosis control programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa comes up
against a deficit in patient adherence to treatment. The research focused simultaneously
on the relations between health care personnel and tuberculosis patients and on the perception of the disease and its treatment in the
community. They therefore proposed a mode
of intervention hinging on improvements to
the training of health care personnel in
patient communication and support, decentralization of access to treatment down to
local health clinics, and reinforcement of treatment supervision by giving patients the
opportunity to choose a "mentor" from
among the health workers or from their community (parent, imam, school teacher…). This
approach turned out to be effective.
Diagnostic test
Tuberculosis is a major contributing factor
to deaths of HIV patients. Early diagnosis of
The ESTIME programme tapped into the
major bibliographic databases in order to
establish the scientific profile of the countries studied (total of publications by broad
field, their trends with time, their impact).
In spite of sometimes opposing conditions,
scientific production on the southern rim of
the Mediterranean has been expanding
rapidly over the past 20 years. The zone as
a whole has advanced more quickly than
the rest of the world. The sector was invisible 25 years ago, but now it counts for 1%
of global scientific production. Although the
score is modest, the trend is remarkable.
There are nevertheless strong differences in
progress shown between regions. The countries to the East of the Mediterranean (Syria
etc.) advance in fits and starts, sensitive to
the ups and downs of political situations.
The Lebanon and Jordan are the most dynamic. Egypt is the giant of that area. However,
the salient feature is the extreme dynamism
of North-West Africa, to which the whole
southern Mediterranean rim zone owes
most of its advances. The trend has been
Source SCI/Thomson,
traitements P.L. Rossi et R. Waast.
he IRD and its partner the University Cheick Anta Diop of Dakar (UCAD) has organized
the first ”MAT days” devoted to the applications of mathematics and information
technology to sustainable development issues. The four
special workshops, making the first sizeable scientific
event on the Sciences of complexity to be held in SubSaharan Africa, brought together representatives and
researchers from several African and French universities
and research institutes especially involved in the regional research programmes on Modelling and Thematic
Applications (MAT) and Support for Computer and Mathematics Research Activities in
Africa (Sarima).
© IRD/J.P. Nguessan
© Maee
© IRD/J. Thomas
T
p. 2 News
New Caledonia
T
© IRD/J.-P. Gonzalez
T
unfailing for 20 years, carried by the vigorous growth of Morocco and Tunisia, and
latterly of Algeria which since 2000 has
taken off. Scientific production is extremely
specialized, strong in material sciences and
engineering – and a sub-trend specialization
in life sciences. This is particularly true in
Egypt and North-West Africa, but is also
noticeable in the those countries on the eastern border of the Mediterranean.
International attention accorded to the
works in question are relatively disappointing (impact factor of 0.3 as against 0.5 in
Latin America and 0.8 to 1 in the rest of the
world). However, it can be high for certain
sub-disciplines.
Innovation to the rescue
of research
infection is therefore important to allow
prescription of appropriate treatment and
to prevent full development of TB.
New more specific and more sensitive tests
have been devised, founded on the in vitro
measurement of the secretion of a protein,
interferon-␥, by the T lymphocyte cells challenged with specific antigens of Mycobactérium tuberculosi. Their sensitivity proved to be comparable with that found in
previous tests. The new test showed the
advantage of not being influenced by previous BCG vaccination and of higher specificity.
© Claire Hutchings,
University of Oxford, UK
T
© IRD/J.O. Job
Satellite land-use
snapshot
© IRD/P. Cayré
Research, technology
and innovation
in the Mediterranean
Only Morocco and Tunisia currently have
questionnaire surveys on innovation. The
ESTIME programme therefore made use of
these existing surveys and, when necessary, conducted qualitative enquiries
among industrial companies. The results
indicate strong differentiation of: between industrial firms, not so much by sector,
size or geographical location, but by their
mode of technological learning.
Some firms appear to favour the acquisition, learning and transfer of technology
and of knowledge between the different
actors of the national innovation system.
These “innovatory” companies nevertheless represent too small a proportion of
the whole of the industrial fabric.
The results presented show that for the
research system innovation represents more
of a chance than a constraint. It is the fruit
of interactions between a great number of
economic actors. A national system of
innovation is being created, self-generated
without pre-determined plan. The qualitative studies revealed some reactive companies which are not necessarily boxed into
excessively narrow markets or incapable of
reform. Consequently, a wide range of
types of firm now make up the Moroccan
economy. The past years have seen the
appearance of a broad “world of innovation” which includes the official bodies
overseeing innovation support policy, but
also a growing number of companies.
Observation revealed relationships and
interactions at work between the great
variety of different actors, enterprises, academic laboratories, public powers, financing agencies, clients and end-users.
p. 4 Partners
Maternal health
Learning to assess
programmes
T
hirty leaders of maternal and neonatal
health programmes took part in the
first French-language course in “Monitoring
and assessment of maternal and neonatal
health programmes”, organized by the research unit Sciences économiques et sociales,
systèmes de santé,
sociétés, jointly involving the IRD, INSERM, the
University of the Mediterranean and the
Moroccan Institut National d’Administration
Sanitaire held in Rabat
from 7 to 25 January.
Consult the articles in full on the IRD Internet site: http://www.ird.fr
© IRD/O. Barrière
p. 8-9 Research
p. 1 News
Kyoto protocol
Source SCI/Thomson,
traitements P.L. Rossi/IRD
Abstracts for the international issue