In the last two decades the Council on Health Research for Development (COHRED)together with the Global Forum for Health Research and other collaborating agencies havetaken on the centre stage to advance the goals of ensuring that research for planning anddecision making is made accessible for those purposes. Whilst health research developmentis being promoted there are very critical questions that must be addressed. For instance (i)whose voice is heard at national and international gatherings on ENHR; (ii) is there anational consensus position that can be spoken about? ; and (iii) to what extent is healthresearch essential or not? To this end, COHRED has put in place a mechanism to attemptnot only nationally, but also at a regional and eventually a global level to establish aconsensus position on ENHR.
