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Few clinical trials are done in Africa: COVID-19 shows why this urgently needs to change
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Few clinical trials are done in Africa: COVID-19 shows why this urgently needs to change
(courtesy: THE CONVERSATION, 06 Apr 2020)
The World Health Organisation (WHO), in its quest to find efficacious therapies to treat COVID-19, plans to conduct a multi-arm, multi-country clinical trial. The trials have yet to begin, but ten countries have already signed up. Only one of them, South Africa, is on the African continent.
Of course, the WHO isn’t the only organisation trying to find treatments or even a vaccine for COVID-19. The United States National Institutes of Health maintains an online platform that lists all registered, ongoing clinical trials globally. On March 26, a quick search of the platform using the term “coronavirus” revealed 157 ongoing trials; 87 of these involve either a drug or a vaccine, while the rest are behavioural studies. Only three are registered in Africa – all of them in Egypt.
This low representation of African countries in clinical trials is not unusual. Poor visibility of existing sites, limited infrastructure and unpredictable clinical trial regulatory timelines are some of the key issues hindering investments in this area.
Africa’s virtual absence from the clinical trials map is a big problem. The continent displays an incredible amount of genetic diversity. If this diversity is not well represented in clinical trials, the trial findings cannot be generalised to large populations.
The same goes for the outcomes of the COVID-19 studies. They too may not be relevant for people in African countries unless conducted locally. This is because responses to drugs or vaccines are complicated and can be influenced by, among other things, human genetics: different people will respond differently to different drugs and vaccines.