SciDev.Net reports on Forum 2012, an international meeting to take place in Cape Town, South Africa, in April, which “aims to shake up donor-recipient relations in a quest for more enduring health gains.” The meeting, themed “Beyond Aid,” “will consider a funding model in which poor countries develop their own contracts and partnerships, and use their own resources, and how donors can support that model rather than just provide development aid,” the news service writes.

“‘Forum 2012 will be the first major way in which we try to integrate global efficacy and national capacity building to build on what countries can do — rather than home in on their problems,’ says Carel IJsselmuiden, director of the Council on Health Research for Development (COHRED) Group in Geneva, which now incorporates the Global Forum,” SciDev.Net notes. The news service provides a brief history of COHRED’s merger with the Global Forum for Health Research and highlights some African nations as examples of developing countries investing in their own capacity (Stearns, 1/12).