Don wants Africa to invest more in safety expertise

African countries have been challenged to invest more in building capacity in areas of safety and monitoring boards.

The remarks were made by African Malaria Network Trust (AMANET) managing trustee Prof Wen Kilama on Monday when opening a three-day international training on Data Safety and Monitoring Board (DSMB) for senior African research scientists from various continental institutions in Dar es Salaam.

DSMBs that undertake health clinical or field trials involving human subjects were always involved in random clinical trials like malaria trials and had the authority to discontinue a trial if the design was not appropriate.

The boards also had the power to terminate a study if there was strong evidence that it had already achieved its primary objective or if the objective could not be achieved.

``We need to build African experts who will participate in these committees. The problem is that the DSMB is very new to Africa,`` Prof Kilama said.

He urged the participants to start advocating the establishment of DSMBs for appropriate studies undertaken at each country�s institutions.

A coordinator for the workshop, Prof. Geoffrey Targett from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the board was facing challenges due to an increase in new malaria medicines or drugs and vaccines.

``We get difficulty in dealing with such challenges. We had drugs that worked in the past, but now we have new drugs that are complicated; here we need people with skills,`` said Prof. Targett.

``Training in safety boards is very important as experts are dealing in clinical and vaccines. This needs a group of people who are skilled and able to ensure that trials are done safely,`` he said.

The coordinator said the biggest challenged the board was facing was the fact that clinical trials were too complicated.

``We have difficulty in Africa of not having enough people to fool up on these trials,`` he said.

Several malaria drug and vaccine trials in Africa were taking place in Mali and Burkina Faso.

Prof. Targett said DSMB worked with drug companies outside Africa but very little was achieved.

``We are planning in future that the board becomes predominantly African,`` he said.

According to the coordinator, one could become a board member of DSMB by invitation from a sponsor of a trial, or by being invited on the basis of suggestions by senior researchers.

The training aimed at ensuring African research scientists particularly from African continent serve on safety boards.
Participants were drawn from Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Gambia and Mali.