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KINTAMPO HEALTH RESEARCH  CENTRE(KHRC)

Kintampo Health Research Centre (KHRC) is one of three field research centres under the Health  Research Unit (HRU) of the Ghana Health Service(GHS) - Ghana. The Centre was set up in 1994 in collaboration with the  Maternal and Child Epidemiology Unit of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Its mandate was to provide a base for field epidemiological and other health research m the forest-savannah transitional ecological and cultural zone of the country. KHRC is located in Kintampo town, in the Brong Ahafo region; the other two centres are in Navrongo in the Upper East region and Dangme West in Greater Accra region.

The Centre has office space in a shared block with the Kintampo District Health Administration, and in an adjoining purpose built block. These provide for fieldwork offices and offices for support services, training room, computer centre, laboratory, library and meeting room, and stores. The computer centre has a high-volume on-site data management capacity. The laboratory is equipped for the collection, processing and storage of samples and of late, analysis of some nutritional assays. The Centre maintains a fleet of off-road vehicles, motorbikes and bicycles for fieldwork and has a stand-by generator.

KHRC has a core of experienced research staff that includes an epidemiologist, a public health physician, a medical statistician, a general medical officer, research officers trained at masters level and a number of graduate-level assistant research officers. It also has an experienced cadre of trained field staff, with facilities for recruiting and training additional staff for projects as required. The current staff strength is 134. It has a well-establishsd administrative system that provides administrative and logistic support for projects. The Centre is committed to identifying young graduates for development and professional training into high calibre senior research scientists.

The Centre has a well-developed field study area, which currently covers 88 villages in the Kintampo District (with a total population of approximately 140,000). This will soon be expanded to cover a population of 400,000 in three neighbouring districts. The entire population in the study area has been enumerated and compounds identified by a systematically allocated address code.

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The study area has also been mapped using the Geographical Information System (GIS), which captures the location of important health, educational and other community development resources. In the bigger villages, the GIS captures the location of individual compounds in the village. It maintains nutrition, morbidity and demographic surveillanceon children and female adult population. It has established credibility and rapport with the District Assembly and traditional authorities, and; has enjoyed good compliance with several projects over the years.

The Centre has particularly been focusing on the development and evaluation of public health nutrition interventions and is currently exploring emerging issues relating to micronutrient interventions. It has also carried out research projects under the Safe Motherhood Initiative. KHRC is currently expanding into clinical research and has recently participated in two multi-centre clinical trials on malaria and pneumonia.

KHRC has a large ongoing programme of collaborative research with the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). It also has strong research links with several international universities and organisations, including the World Health Organisation (WHO), UNICEF, The Population Council, The Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, The School of Public Health, Harvard; the Applied Research on Child Health (ARCH) project at the Harvard Institute for International Development; Dugald Baird Centre for Research on Women's Health in Aberdeen University and The Hospital for Sick children. University of Toronto.

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In-country links include: specific research collaboration with the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital's Dept. of Child Health and Brong Ahafo Regional Health Administration. The Centre inputs into teaching programme at the School of Public Health, Legon; and field residential training programme for the School of Public Health, KNUST/SMS and the University for Development Studies.

From its position within the HRU, the Centre has provided technical support to programmes within the Ministry. Working with the Nutrition Unit of the MoH, it has played a key role in the developmentjofa national programme for vitamin A deficiency control, and currently, provides technical support for activities within this programme. It has also participated in discussions to identity and develop research priorities to; the Ministry, and has participated in programme evaluations. In collaboration with the Human Resource Division of the GHS and the Navrongo Health Research , Centre, KHRC currently conducts an in-service training programme under which District Health Management Teams obtain training in District Health Sy stems Operations (DISHOP). KHRC is committed to rapid and wide dissemination of results from research projects and to working with the relevant units within the MoH to translate those results into policy and programmes. Location: Brong Ahafo Region Area: 7,162 square kilometers Vegetation: Forest - Savannah Transition Climate: One rainy season (March to October), one dry season (November to April) Ethnicity: 41  Bono, 21  Mo, 31  Northern ethnic groups, 7 Others Total population: 140,000 (under surveillance) Main occupation: Subsistence agriculture Religion: Majority Christian and a minority Muslim

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