South-North Clinical Trial collaborations: Strengthening local biostatistics capacity in sub-Saharan African countries.
Conference
64th ISI World Statistics Congress - Ottawa, Canada
Format: IPS Abstract
Keywords: capacity-building
Session: IPS 225 - Building statistical capacity for clinical trials in Sub-Saharan Africa
Wednesday 19 July 10 a.m. - noon (Canada/Eastern)
Abstract
In the last two decades, because of disease burdens (HIV, TB, and other communicable and non-communicable diseases) and increase in funding, biomedical research in Low- and Middle Income Countries (LMIC) countries has increased. Most of the biomedical research projects in
these regions are conducted with North-South collaborations.
I will take the case of strengthening biostatistics capacity in Sub-Saharan African (SSA)
countries to demonstrate the need for local biostatisticians in conducting clinical trails through
South-North collaborations. In most SSA countries, biomedical research is new and biostatistical
resources are not well developed. Conducting biomedical research requires a research discipline that requires training, experience, and critical thinking. Strengthening local biostatistics resources will enable the local biomedical research teams to have statistical leaders that contribute to the critical thinking, and to the design and analysis of conducting clinical trials. I will focus on the summary of the two workshops that were conducted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America (2009) and in Gaborone, Botswana (2011). These workshops were conducted to assess the need and to help strengthen the biostatistics resources in SSA. I will examine lessons learned from these workshops and discuss the influence the workshops have in increasing the biostatistical activities in the region.