//Meetings: February-May 2016

Meetings: February-May 2016

AARCHD

Dr Thomas Nyirenda, EDCTP South-South Networking and Capacity Development Manager, attended the 30th meeting of the WHO African Advisory Committee for Health Research and Development (AARCHD) in Cape Town, South Africa from 10-11 March 2016. The role of AARCHD is to advise WHO African Region on the research agenda in relation to health and development.

DiTECT-HAT consortium

The DiTECT-HAT project kick-off meeting took place in Montpellier, France from 15-17 March. It is funded through the ‘Diagnostic tools for poverty-related diseases’ call and aims to implement and validate diagnostic tools for human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) elimination and clinical trials in Africa. EDCTP’s Project Officer Dr Michelle Helinski attended the meeting which brought together consortium partners from Belgium, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, DR Congo, France, Guinea, and the United Kingdom.

From left to right: Enock Matovu (External Advisory Board); Michelle Helinski (EDCTP); Philippe Büscher (ITM, Belgium); Mamadou Camara (PNLTHA-MoH, Guinea); Eric Fèvre (UoL, UK), Pere Simarro (External Advisory Board), Hamidou Ilboudo (CIRDES, Burkina Faso); Bruno Bucheton (IRD, France; PNLTHA, Guinea); Veerle Lejon (IRD, France); Alicia Bert (IRD, France); Dramane Kaba (IPR, Ivory Coast). Attended the meeting but not in the picture: Dieudonné Mumba Ngoyi (INRB, DRC); Crispin Lumbala wa Mbuyi (PNLTHA, DRC).

Clinical trial data sharing

Dr Pauline Beattie, EDCTP Operations Manager, participated in a meeting on the ‘Future of Clinical Trial Data Sharing’ at the Wellcome Trust in London from 21-22 March 2016. At this invitation-only meeting, the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials (MRCT) Center and collaborators presented plans to launch a new not-for-profit organization charged with directing, implementing and governing a global clinical trial data-sharing platform.

APPG TB and APPG Global Health

Ahead of World Tuberculosis Day (on 24 March 2016), Dr Michael Makanga, EDCTP Executive Director, participated in an event to commemorate World TB Day in the House of Commons, London, United Kingdom on 22 March 2016. The invitation was extended by the very active All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Tuberculosis and Aeras. The theme for the discussions was ‘Preventing the world’s leading infectious killer: the case for TB vaccine research and development’. A meeting between EDCTP and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health was confirmed for 6 September 2016.

Africa-EU

In association with the African EU High-Level Policy Dialogue on Science, Technology and Innovation, a stakeholder meeting was convened on the implementation of an African-EU Research and Innovation Partnership on Food and Nutrition Security and Sustainable Agriculture. The forum was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 5-6 April 2016. Dr Ole Olesen, EDCTP Director of North-North Cooperation, presented EDCTP as a working model for long-term, equal research partnerships between Africa and Europe.

TB drug conference and TB funders meeting

The 8th Critical Path to TB Drug Regimens workshop (CPTR) was held in Washington DC from 4-7 April 2016 and attended by more than 160 participants including top TB drug and diagnostics researchers from all over the world. The theme of the workshop was “Evolving TB Drug Regimen and Diagnostic Development: Where Innovation Meets Implementation”. EDCTP was represented by Senior Project Officer Dr Monique Rijks-Surette.

She also represented EDCTP at the first TB Funder Forum on Capacity Building which was organised by WHO on 7 April. This meeting was organised as a follow-up to the recent WHO publication Global Action Framework for TB Research, which proposed that regular fora be organised to assemble key TB Research & Development (R&D) funders to discuss strategies to maximise the impact of invested funding and for supporting research in TB-endemic countries.

NTD Network kick-off

Dr Ole Olesen participated in the kick-off meeting for the new Neglected Tropical Diseases Network in Montpellier, France, on 7-8 April 2016. The meeting was a follow-up of the G7 Ministers of Research meeting in Berlin 2015 and organised by Aviesan, the French National Alliance for Life Sciences and Health. The meeting’s purpose was to elaborate mission, strategy and goals of the network. On 8 April, Dr Olesen participated as a speaker in the round-table session with French and European funders.

Senegal: Financial & project management training

EDCTP organised a financial and project management training for grantees in Dakar, Senegal from 11-13 April 2016. The EDCTP team consisted of Abdoulie Barry, Director of Finance and Administration, Dr Ole Olesen and Mrs. Mary Jane Coloma-Egelink, Grants Finance Officer.

European Parliament: STOA workshop

The Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA) panel is an integral part of the structure of the European Parliament. The panel has the task to independently assess the impact of new science and technologies. In this way it assists the Members of the European Parliament in their policy making with independent information.

On 19 April 2016, a STOA workshop was held on investing in health in the developing world. The main topics were the shortage of health workers, the burden of infectious diseases and the economic benefits of investing in health. Dr Michael Makanga, EDCTP Executive Director, was one of the panelists on the specific support that could be provided by the European Union. Dr Makanga stressed the importance of research and development for poverty-related and neglected infectious diseases in order to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. Implementation research for interventions is needed in order to improve access to health care.

Gates Foundation: Product Development Challenge

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation organised the Global Health Product Development Challenge in Seattle, USA from 26-28 April 2016. Around 250 selected leaders from the global health product development community participated, including Dr Ole Olesen on behalf of EDCTP. A series of small creative workshops were intended to develop actionable solutions to six global health challenges, including more efficient and faster implementation of new interventions and exploring the role of sex and gender in clinical trials.

Cameroon: 10th INTEREST workshop

The 10th INTEREST workshop (the International Workshop on HIV Treatment, Pathogenesis and Prevention Research in Resource-Limited Settings) took place in Yaoundé, Cameroon from 2-6 May 2016. The workshop is an important event for African HIV researchers. EDCTP North-North Networking Officer Lara Pandya presented EDCTP2 in one of the sessions and on 6 May, conducted a workshop on EDCTP2.

10th INTEREST: Dr Catherine Hankins (Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development, Netherlands; Scientific Chair), and Sinata Koulla-Shiro MD (Ministry of Health, Cameroon; Local Chair 2016; Representative for Cameroon in the EDCTP General Assembly)

Screen TB kick-off

The kick-off meeting for ScreenTB, one of the six EDCTP grants funded under the 2014 ‘Diagnostics for poverty-related diseases’ call for proposals, took place from 2-3 May 2016. As the assigned project officer, Dr Monique Rijks-Surette was invited to participate. ScreenTB is a consortium of four African and four European artners, led by Professor Gerhard Walzl from Stellenbosch University in South Africa. ScreenTB builds upon the work from the EDCTP1-funded AE-TBC grant, which identified six host biomarkers for active TB regardless of HIV status of the patient. ScreenTB will implement this set of six biomarkers into a rapid, laboratory-free point-of-care test.