New Call for Proposals: Diagnostic tools for poverty-related diseases
EDCTP published its second call for proposals under its new programme on 2 December 2014, the day the launch of the second EDCTP programme was officially celebrated at an international meeting in Cape Town, South Africa. Projects funded under this call (with a budget of €15M for 4-8 grants) should lead to rapid and simple diagnostics that can be deployed at low cost in health systems in resource-poor settings. The closing date for the first stage is 2 March 2015.
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Purpose and scope
The purpose of this call is to invest in projects aiming to validate the clinical performance and/or implementation of new or improved diagnostic tools and technologies for detection of any of the poverty-related diseases, including as co-infections. These tools and technologies should improve the performance of diagnosis, prediction, monitoring, intervention or assessment of therapeutic response, with a significant impact on clinical decision and health outcomes.
Applications should focus on late stage development (e.g. evaluation and/or demonstration phase trials) or implementation studies in sub-Saharan Africa. Applications should further provide detailed plans for World Health Organisation (WHO) endorsement and/or implementation of the diagnostic tools and technologies upon successful completion of the project.
Proposals focused entirely on early-stage, laboratory-based studies using samples stored in biobanks are outside the scope of this call. Priority will be given to point-of-care diagnostics for use in resource-limited settings.
Background
Disease diagnosis in sub-Saharan Africa is highly challenging, as the population is predominantly rural and the health care systems often have limited resources. Early and rapid diagnosis of poverty-related diseases offers the best opportunity for patients to receive timely and appropriate treatment, but adequate diagnostic tools are not readily available because of a lack of drive to develop and deploy them in disease-endemic countries. Therefore, there is a clear need for the development and uptake of rapid, accurate, cost-effective, scalable and field-friendly diagnostic tools.
Poverty-related diseases
For this call, poverty-related diseases include HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and the following neglected infectious diseases: dengue/severe dengue; rabies; human African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness); Leishmaniases; cysticercosis/taeniasis; dracunculiasis (guinea-worm disease); echinococcosis; foodborne trematodiases; lymphatic filariasis; onchocerciasis (river blindness); schistosomiasis; soil-transmitted helminthiases; Buruli ulcer; leprosy (Hansen disease); trachoma; yaws; as well as emerging infectious diseases of particular relevance for Africa, such as Ebola.