Research Projects (Current and Past)
CURRENT PROJECTS
Title: African coaLition for Epidemic Research, Response and Training (ALERRT)
Funder: The European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP)
Project Period: December 2017 – December 2022
Summary of Project Aims: ALERRT is a multi-disciplinary consortium (21 partner organizations from 13 countries - 9 African and 4 European) building a patient-centered clinical research network to respond to epidemics across sub-Saharan Africa. ALERRT aims to reduce the public health and socio-economic impact of disease outbreaks in sub-Saharan Africa by building a sustainable clinical and laboratory research preparedness and response network. The Workpackage 4 of ALERRT is being led from KCCR, and is working towards establishing a response framework that alleviates administrative, regulatory and ethical bottlenecks and mobile-research capabilities that together ensure ALERRT can act swiftly to initiate fit-for-purpose clinical and laboratory research in varying settings within SSA in case of actual REPID threats. Read more about ALERRT here.
Title: African Research Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases (ARNTD)
Funders: The Volkswagen Foundation, USAID, COR-NTD, DFID
Project Period: December 2014 – June 2022
Summary of Project Aims: The network was set up by globally recognized Africa-focussed NTD researchers with the aim of promoting cohesion among NTD researchers in Africa and to provide an authentic African voice to the global efforts to address NTDs. The Networks includes individuals from a variety of disciplines across the health, social and management sciences, including policy makers and program managers with over 150 active members spread across over 33 countries, including Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone African countries and members in the diaspora. The ARNTD Secretariat is hosted by the KCCR, Read more about the ARNTD here.
Title: Snakebite Incidence, Treatment and Effects in Ghana (SnakebITE)
Funder: Hamish Ogston Foundation, Global Health Strategies and the Royal Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
Project Period: September 2018 – September 2021
Summary of Project Aims: Snakebite has been included in the WHO list of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) since 2017 and has also been declared as a problem of global heath significance by the WHO at the 2018 World Health Assembly. The GHID Group is working on hospital and community survey to assess the prevalence and economic burden of snakebite in Ghana. In this project called Snakebite Incidence Treatment and Effects in Ghana (SnakebITE), we seek to gather critical evidence on the actual burden of Snakebite in the poorest region of Ghana where the main hospital often has over 60% of the wards being occupied by victims of snakebite. This study will achieve the following: 1.) Allow more accurate estimates of the national burden by extension from this targeted study, 2.) Fill the missing gap of data on treatment seeking, current treatment practices and clinical and health outcomes of SBE, 3.) Provide critical information for determining stocking and informed-distribution of antivenoms in Ghana.
Title: Skills for Excellence In Science Series (SEXISS)
Funder: Pharmacokinetics Africa, The African Research Training Centre,
Project Period: July 2018 – Ongoing
Summary of Project Aims: The SEXISS is a series of annual workshops aimed at promoting excellence in science among medical, bio-medical and advanced nursing practitioners, graduate students and early-mid career scientists by equipping them with the fundamental principles and technical know-how to improve their scientific output in research, academia, or career in any health or biomedical field. The workshops cover areas such as concepts of Scientific Writing with special emphasis on proposal development for grant application; manuscript writing for publications; basic skills in epidemiology with STATA (BASES), Research Methods (REMIND), Good Clinical Practice (GCP) and other topical areas.
Title: Lancet One Health Commission
Funder: Funds from German Government, University of Oslo and Group’s internal funds
Project Period: January 2019 – January 2022
Summary of Project Aims: The One Health Lancet Commission is hosted by the Centre for Global Health at University of Oslo (UiO). The Lancet has nominated the two co-chairs: Dr. John Amuasi, Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, and Prof. Andrea Winkler, Centre for Global Health at UiO and Center for Global Health at the Technical University of Munich. A core group comprising of staff from the Centre for Global Health at UiO, WHO and Imperial College is driving the direction, design and implementation of the Commission. Read more here.
Title: Antibiotic Stewardship (AMS) in Ghana – Assessing antibiotic use, antibiotic resistance, and accountability mechanisms
Funder: GIGA Institute, University of Oxford and Group’s internal funds
Project Period: July 2019 – December 2021
Summary of Project Aims: The objective of this study is to assess the implementation and effect of antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) efforts in Ghana on three levels. In AG AMUASI we are responsible for assessing the implementation of a hospital- and community-based AMU monitoring system aimed at understanding the demand, supply and resulting use of antibiotics and linking this to patterns of AMR found in WP 1, which deals with antimicrobial use.
Title: ALERRT Clinical Characterisation of COVID-19 in Africa
Funder: The Wellcome Trust
Project Period: April 2020 – October 2021
Summary of Project Aims: The objective of this study is to clinically characterize COVID-19 in Ghana, Cameroon, Uganda, Kenya and Senegal. The research also looks into response to treatment, including supportive care and novel therapeutics. This work is critical so Africa can determine unique features of the disease and its transmission in the country and the probabilities of different clinical outcomes. The work will provide real-time information on the clinical and epidemiological patterns of the diseases and inform the development of clinical guidance documents on the basis of evidence obtained. The full benefit of this study to Ghana will be obtained if it is able to cover a representative sample of COVID-19 patients. For video see here.
Title: COVID-19 Healthcare Workers Survey
Funder: The University of British Columbia
Project Period: April 2020 – October 2021
Summary of Project Aims: A survey titled ‘Perceptions and Preparedness of Healthcare Workers regarding Local Infection Prevention and Control Procedures for COVID-19’ was conducted in all ALERRT member countries. After completing the online survey, a separate link wis sent to the participant to undertake an educational training for CPD points. The training module which was crafted to be concise and self-paced, but with an expiration date is made up of lecture videos and assessments provided to update health care workers on COVID-19. The training was aimed at increasing the knowledge of health care workers so as to be able to stay safe and readily screen, isolate and treat suspected and confirmed cases of COVID-19 in their line of duty. See archived videos here.
Title: Modeling for COVID-19
Funder: AG AMUASI
Project Period: April 2020 – December 2021
Summary of Project Aims: Modeling to estimate Ghana’s reproductive number (R0) for COVID-19 and developing predictive models for number of people exposed, the number who might fall ill (asymptomatic, mild and severe), and the number who might die. This model will take into consideration various control measures introduced and their duration and is critical for decision-making around introducing or lifting social-distancing measures and their socio-economic implications. The research is with the involvement of the Ministry of Health, the Ghana Health Service, and the Ghana COVID-19 taskforce.
Title: ANTICOV Clinical Trial
Funder: UNITAID/BMBF
Project Period: July 2020 – October 2021
Summary of Project Aims: The ANTICOV Clinical Trial is; ‘An open-label, multicenter, randomized, adaptative platform trial of the safety and efficacy of several therapies, including antiviral therapies, versus control in mild / moderate cases of COVID-19’. ANTICOV aims to investigate mild to moderate COVID-19 patients, determine the efficacy and safety of various treatment regimen in preventing the progression to severe disease with need for hospitalization or specialized care. Additional studies will determine the impact of COVID-19 treatment on the type, strength and duration of the immune responses in SARS-CoV-2 patients in sub-Saharan Africa. The Trial is a multi-country platform involving fourteen (14) African countries. In Ghana the trial is being conducted by KCCR researchers and the study site is the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi. The trial is sponsored globally by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), locally in Ghana by the Bernhard Nocht for Institute Tropical Medicine (BNITM).
Title: RECOVERY Clinical Trial
Funder: Wellcome Trust via Oxford University
Project Period: July 2020 – October 2021
Summary of Project Aims: RECOVERY is a randomized control trial among hospitalized adults to investigate the effect of different therapies of COVID-19 disease. The randomized trial among patient hospitalized for COVID-19 is being carried out in two study sites (KATH, Kumasi and GA EAST, Accra). All eligible patients will be randomly allocated between several treatment arms, each to be given in addition to the usual standard of care in the participating hospital.
Title: WHO Clinical Data Platform
Funder: World Health Organization
Project Period: November 2020 – June 2021
Summary of Project Aims: The WHO CPD project is an international and multi-stakeholder partnership project aimed at the implementation of the Global COVID-19 data platform for clinical characterization and management of hospitalized patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19. The team in Ghana, is led by the Global Health and Infectious Diseases Research Group at KCCR.
Title: Critical Care registry for quality improvement - GHANA-ICU Project
Funder: Wellcome and Oxford MORU
Project Period: December 2020 – February 2022
Summary of Project Aims: The aim of the project is to integrate critical care services in an international network useful to identify optimal interventions for critically ill patients. The newly established infrastructure can be used to participate in registry-enabled clinical trials launched by the WHO or other national and international bodies (e.g. A Randomised, Embedded, Multi-factorial, Adaptive Platform Trial for Community-Acquired Pneumonia (REMAP CAP)3 study in COVID-19 patients). The CCA registry will then be used for specific quality improvement initiatives determined and conducted locally in collaboration with the treating teams.
Title: Seroprevalence of COVID-19 (SeroCoV) in four African Countries and SERO-3
Funder: BNITM and Ghana COVID-19 Trust Fund
Project Period: June 2020 – December 2021
Summary of Project Aims: Seroprevalence study on the current COVID-19 pandemic to determine the current burden of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Ghana. The aim of the study is to estimate the SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in Ghana. Primary objectives are to estimate the SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence within two districts per study country and describe the SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence across different regions (i.e. rural and urban/semi-urban) in the respective study countries