Preparing for a pandemic: highlighting themes for research funding and practice—perspectives from the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness (GloPID-R)

Strengthening capacity for clinical research in sub-Saharan Africa: partnerships and networks

“…What has become crystal clear is that strengthening research capacity in Africa is critical to enhancing Africa's self-sufficiency, preparedness for the next public health emergency, and ability to fight against the endemic infectious diseases. Global and regional bodies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), European Union (EU), African Union (AU), and development partners, are cooperating to develop models of international cooperation, partnership, networking, and science diplomacy to address current challenges and accelerate preparedness for the next epidemic (Norton et al, 2020). Going forward EDCTP should create more visibility of African sites developed with its support for increased participation in clinical research against current and future epidemics.…”

“…Developing the political support, financing and coordination required to build this capacity are all crucial components of global epidemic preparedness (Norton et al, 2020). The future of clinical research in the sub-Saharan Africa region will depend on a continuing stream of young, motivated, and talented trainee scientists, improved site facilities and commitment from member states to own, sustain and lead the developed resources.…”

“…EDCTP is primarily a Europe-Africa collaborative venture but goes wider than that as the war against infectious disease is a global responsibility because no one is safe until everyone is. Networking capacity is required in multi-centre PAGE 9 OF 36 clinical research programmes (Norton et al, 2020). Both North-South and South-South collaborations have been fundamental to the capacity development approach of EDCTP (Bockarie et al, 2018).…”

“…Global research collaboration, through partnerships, networks, and consortia, has been promoted as the best way forward for sourcing and deploying research funding to effectively tackle infectious diseases, including emerging and re-emerging infections (Norton et al, 2020). Key expected outcomes of the Enhancing Support for Strengthening the Effectiveness of National Capacity Efforts (ESSENCE) Health Research initiative, a collaboration of 40 agencies that fund health research capacity strengthening in low-and middleincome countries (LMIC) (Kilmarx et al, 2020), are increased efficiency and equity in health research capacity-strengthening activities with decreased duplication of efforts.…”

Trust, but Verify: Informed Consent, AI Technologies, and Public Health Emergencies

“…• Public Health Emergency Research: multidisciplinary efforts to understand, inform and ultimately control the transmission and proliferation of disease (see for instance [111]) as well as social impacts [99,104], and to consider the long-term implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and other PHEs [112]. Major challenges include:…”