Promotion of medical research in Arab countries needs serious efforts and several strategic goals must be agreed on by all stakeholders—scientists and decision makers. The strategy should include upgrading research infrastructure and equipment, providing sufficient funds and high-quality training, as well as promoting excellence. Additionally, Arab scientists working abroad should be seen as an asset. China has already shown the way by recruiting qualified Chinese academics, mainly from USA, so that by 2018, China’s research output will be growing by 330%, according to forecast.5
We believe that an Arab medical research council—inspired from the US National Institutes of Health, the Medical Reasearch Council in the UK, and INSERM in France—is necessary to establish strategies that promote medical and health research in the Arab world in collaboration with international institutions
Historically pioneers in several sciencific domains, Arab scientists have an obligation to initiate a scientific Arab spring to promote medical research and subsequently participate in the development of their nations