EDCTP site visits are conducted by the EDTCP secretariat staff: the Financial Manager, the Capacity Building Manager, our Haute Representative, and our Executive Director (depending on availability). Available representatives from EDCTP constituencies the DCCC and the PB also attend. The site visits are planned according to strategic importance, and the number of EDCTP supported projects in the country.

EDCTP conducts site visits in Africa for three main objectives – Advocacy, Data Collection, and Technical Assessment.

Advocacy is important for EDCTP, because it enhances our visibility in the region and the country through sensitisation of the national and regional authorities of the capacity building effort of EDCTP in the country, and advocacy also galvanises the legitimacy and recognition of the role of the DCCC members.

Our reasons for data collection are more widespread. There are several main topics: Public and Private Health Systems, Regulatory Structures, Ethics Committees, Clinical Trials, Capacity Building, and Potential Areas of Collaboration with Other Funding Agencies.

The site visits for Public and Private Health systems take place to describe the structure of the health system, and to find out what the priorities of the National Health programme are, where it concerns the 3 poverty related diseases.

For Regulatory Structures we are interested in finding out what procedures are in place for clinical trial application, product importation, and clinical trial inspections. EDCTP is also there to assess the training needs of NRA’s.

EDCTP collects data on Ethics Committees, partly to describe the system in place for Ethical Review at national level, and at institutional level, but also to assess the training of Ethics Committees or IRB, and to assess the need of supporting the creation of new NEC or IRB’s.
Clinical Trials involving poverty related diseases and their sources of funding are interesting to EDCTP, because we would like to make an inventory of the 3 PRD clinical trials in the country in the last five years. Similarly, EDCTP will be looking at Capacity Building activities relating to Clinical Trials and their sources of funding at national level, so that we can make an inventory of the capacity building related to the 3 PRD clinical trials in the country in the past five years.
Finally EDCTP investigates potential areas of collaboration with other funding agencies, so that EDCTP can assess the potential synergies, concerted actions or joint actions with other funding agencies.

Our third main reason for site visits is Technical Assessment. Breaking down this topic, we have three main sub sections; Capacity Building, Networking, and Financial Systems and IT overview. Capacity Building is studied to establish the baseline data to be used as a basis for future evaluation of project performance, and also to assess if the institution could benefit from any capacity building development in terms of financial training. Networking is assessed to identify site strengths and weaknesses on networking such as capacity to hold training workshops and investigators meetings. Financial systems and IT overviews are assessed a little more deeply. EDCTP is there to assess the current level of internal controls and strength of the present accounting practices with an aim to provide recommendations as to how systems and the control environment can be improved upon to reach a high standard of accurate financial reporting and to reduce the level of risk at the organisation. We assess the need of scheduling subsequent audit visits by determining the level of inherent risk at the institution: e.g. recent fraud and qualified audit reports. EDCTP briefs the CFO on EDCTP financial guidelines and how to complete the annual returns.
The way in which I.T is used at the institution is also reviewed. EDCTP looks at how I.T is used to support the accounting functions, e.g. LAN, automated systems, stock control, fleet management systems and e-mail.