On 15th-20th June, Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, welcomed the twelfth edition of the EDCTP Forum, a leading international event for the showcasing of innovative research around infectious diseases in Africa. EDCTP programmes from the last two decades were brought together under the theme ‘Better health through global research partnerships’.
The master of ceremony for the opening event, Jackie Lumbasi, emphasised the importance of international cooperation as “Health crises know no border… No country on its own can beat health challenges.”
The forum congregated more than 1,000 participants from all over the world, including representatives from research institutes and universities, health care providers, governments, civil society, and public and private research and development partners.
Among the participants were ISGlobal team members David Torres, ACROBAT’s clinical coordinator and Fio Vialard, a predoctoral fellow working on the project. They presented the ACROBAT protocol under the title: “Improving risk-stratification for sick African neonates using a prognostic point-of-care test based on the sTREM-1 biomarker: protocol for a multisite prospective cohort study”. The team highlighted the roles of the project consortium which comprises multiple institutions from Europe and Africa and discussed the scientific rational and methods that will be implemented to recruit a large cohort of sick newborns in four sub-Saharan Africa hospitals. Several scientists from other institutions showed their interest in the project and addressed questions to the speakers.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Global Health EDCTP3 under grant agreement No 101158797.
