Barbara Bierer and Sarah White recently returned from a two-week work trip to Rwanda and Zimbabwe. The trip was motivated by the MRCT Center’s commitment to building clinical research capacity and a better understanding of local efforts to strengthen and sustain the clinical trial ecosystem. They first attended the African Vaccines Regulatory Forum (AVAREF) 14th Meeting of the Technical Coordinating Committee (TCC) and Steering Committee (SC) in Harare, Zimbabwe. The MRCT Center has partnered with AVAREF and, more broadly, with WHO for many years to build capacity for ethical review, optimize the integration of ethics review with regulatory processes, and strengthen the clinical trial ecosystem. To date, our work has included developing a fundamental research ethics training course (to be freely released in September 2024) and conducting site optimization visits to understand the challenges in clinical trial application reviews.
Dr. Bierer and Ms. White also spent time in Kigali, Rwanda, meeting with stakeholders, including the Rwanda FDA, Rwanda National Ethics Committee (RNEC), the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE), the UGHE Ethics Committee, the Butaro District Hospital, the Center for Family Health Research, and the Centre for Impact, Innovation, and Capacity Building for Health Information Systems and Nutrition (CIICHIN).
Working closely with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and WHO, this trip provided significant insight into how the MRCT Center can collaborate with local stakeholders to improve the predictability, sustainability, and quality of clinical trials.