EC Director General for Research and Innovation visits EDCTP trial site and Cape Town office
Robert-Jan Smits, EC Director General for Research and Innovation, visited an EDCTP clinical trial site and EDCTP’s Africa Office in Cape Town yesterday 10 November 2011. The EU-EC delegation visited the Emavundleni Prevention Centre in Crossroads one of the sites for an EDCTP funded HIV study, the CATSA-project. Afterwards at the Africa Office, the delegation met with Prof. Ali Dhansay, acting President of the Medical Research Council of South Africa, other MRC representatives and with Dr Michael Makanga, Head of Africa Office, and EDCTP staff at EDCTP’s Africa Office. The MRC activities and an EDCTP research project were presented to the delegation.
Project coordinator Prof. Keertan Dheda presented the ongoing TB NEAT project which seeks to facilitate the development of point-of-care tests for tuberculosis (TB), and to validate new technologies in clinical primary-care practice in Africa. The main study aims to recruit a total of 1500 adults suspected of having TB at primary care or TB clinics in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Zambia. Additionally 600 children suspected to have TB will be recruited at the South Africa site and others. The first patient was enrolled on 15 April 2011.
The prevention centre visited earlier by the delegation was involved in an EDCTP funded project of the Consortium of Adolescent Trials in South Africa (CATSA) which conducted the recently concluded South Africa Studies on HIV in Adolescents (SASHA). The project coordinator is Prof. Linda-Gail Bekker, chief operating officer of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation and a researcher at the University of Cape Town. The CATSA-project aimed to identify the clinical, legal, ethical and social-behavioural obstacles to conducting adolescent HIV vaccine trials in South Africa.