The Central Africa Network for Tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and Malaria (CANTAM) is the first network of excellence in Sub-Saharan Africa supported by EDCTP in partnership with the European countries for building and developing capacities for the conduct of clinical trials on HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in compliance with ICH/GCP standards.
Specifically this project, which started in January 2009, aims to:
- Develop human resources in the skills required to conduct safe clinical trials including GCP/GLP training and preparation and development of clinical and standardized protocols from recruitment of participants and treatment of biological samples.
- Strengthen ethics review boards and regulatory authorities in needy collaborating sites.
- Strengthen laboratories to be able to perform relevant tests.
- Establish effective community liaison at each site and identifying new study cohorts for future clinical trials on HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
The developing institutions are University of Buea, University Marien Ngouabi and the Centre de Recherche sur les Ressources Végétales in Cameroon and Congo respectively. The established institutions that will assist in learning-by-doing training, transfer of techniques, and mentoring activities are the University of Yaounde1 and Centre International de Reference Chantal Biya in Cameroon, Medical Research Unit of Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Gabon and the University of Tübingen in Germany. OCEAC will provide political support as coordinating institution.
The expected outcomes at the completion of the project are:
- To have built a better research environment in the different sites
- To have the full support of local stakeholders for a long term support of CANTAM
- To be able to participate in multicentric clinical trials in malaria, HIV/AIDS and to have established solid roots for the development of tuberculosis clinical research at CANTAM sites.
