University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) has received a European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) research grant worth 2,127,775 euros to embark on a capacity building project to address implementation challenges for the Sustainable Access and Delivery of New Vaccines in Ghana (SAVING) project. This is the biggest single research grant ever awarded to UHAS.
The journey to the grant began in 2018, when the University’s Institute of Health Research (IHR) led a consortium including the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), Ghana Health Service, Ministry of Health and Swiss TPH, to organise two workshops to develop the proposal, with support from the World Health Organization Tropical Disease research (WHO/TDR) and the Access and Delivery Partnership (UNDP, UNICEF, PATH).
The five-year project, kick-started on 1 November 2020, has IHR Director Professor Margaret Gyapong as the principal investigator, collaborating with Professor Evelyn Ansah (Centre for Malaria Research, IHR-UHAS), Mrs. Delese Darko (Food and Drugs Authority), Dr. Martha Gyansa-Lutterodt (Ministry of Health), and Professor Kaspar Wyss (Swiss TPH) as co-investigators, with support from the entire IHR team.
According to the EDCTP website, EDCTP is a “public-public partnership between countries in Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, supported by the European Union to accelerate the clinical development of new or improved medicinal products for the identification, treatment and prevention of poverty-related infectious diseases, including re-emerging diseases.”