Project description
Addressing disparities in clinical trials in Africa
Africa, despite carrying more than 25 % of the global disease burden due to various factors such as a lack of expertise, unclear regulations and inadequate data, currently conducts only 3 % of clinical trials. To address this disparity, the EU-funded CTCAN project will establish the Clinical Trials Community Africa Network (CTCAN). The aim is to foster collaboration among crucial clinical research stakeholders, pharmaceutical partners and other international counterparts within the African region. The project’s main goal is to improve coordination and sustainability in clinical research through network alignment, raising awareness about available facilities, streamlining regulatory processes and promoting knowledge sharing across regions. CTCAN serves as a valuable platform that consolidates information needed to boost pandemic preparedness and bolster clinical research efforts.
Objective
With over 25% of the global disease burden, only 3% of global clinical trials occur in Africa. This disproportion is driven by inadequacies in clinical research capacity, regulatory process ambiguity, deficient regional patient and disease area data, and lack of visibility of existing clinical research capabilities in Africa. To address this disproportion, this proposal seeks to establish the Clinical Trials Community Africa Network (CTCAN), a collaborative framework of key clinical research stakeholders in the African region, pharma partners, and other relevant international stakeholders, with the overarching goal of bringing more clinical trials to the region in a sustainable and coordinated manner. This collaboration will map and draw on the experience and expertise of already existing networks and initiatives. It will create a network of subnetworks that will foster coordination in clinical research, by ensuring and encouraging alignment in disease area prioritization, raising awareness and visibility of existing capacity from sites and labs across Africa, operationalising the regulatory processes across the region, and strengthen less experienced sites and labs through a clinical trial preparedness framework, while encouraging inter- and cross-continental knowledge and expertise sharing. CTCAN will use and expand the Clinical Trials Community (CTC) platform, an electronic platform consolidating data on researchers, regulations, sites, and epidemiology across the continent. The result will be an ever-present and ready-to-go pool of clinical research sites and labs with the agility to rapidly address new and emerging global health threats, epidemics, and pandemics, thereby efficiently contributing towards clinical research in pandemic preparedness. CTCAN will lay the foundation for a sustainable network of clinical trial sites and laboratories in sub-Saharan Africa by leveraging and initiating collaboration between existing sub-networks, funders, and pharma.
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.2.1 - Health Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-JU-CSA - HORIZON JU Coordination and Support ActionsCoordinator
2007 JOHANNESBURG
South Africa