Project: Renforcement de l'Ethique des Essais Cliniques en Afrique de l'Ouest (REECAO)

Acronym	REECAO (Reference Number: EDCTP-Ethics2015-880)
Duration	01/04/2017 - 31/03/2020
Project Topic	There has recently been a huge increase in the number of clinical trials done in West Africa. The recent epidemic of Ebola and clinical trials in an emergency context have pointed out new challenges in ethical management and research volunteers’ protection. In sub-Saharan African countries with a high level of illiterate volunteers in clinical trials, and socio-cultural specificities limiting the understanding of complex aspects of research, the issues of autonomy, governance, operation, effectiveness and sustainability of ethics committees becomes crucial. Recently the increase of regional ethical issues due to multicentre clinical trials led to the necessity of developing a ethical network for better coordination, transparency and governance of ethics committees.   REECAO is a South-South and North-South network in ethics based on the collaboration between National Ethics Committees (NECs), Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and regulatory agencies (NRAs) of Ghana, Guinea, Mali; and supported by the expertise of Lyon Catholic University (France). The overall objectives of REECAO are: To strengthen/build the capacities of the ethics committees in three West African countries (Mali, Guinea, Ghana) to ensure efficient review of clinical research; To strengthen collaboration/coordination between NECs and IRBs of these countries to improve the governance of NECs and their oversight function; and to establish and promote an independent economic model for NECs. To achieve these objectives, REECAO has established a network between NECs and IRBs of the participating countries in order to improve their governance. REECAO has set up a North-South and South-South ethical watch to assist ethics committee members in their decision-making. REECAO is implementing a joint training programme for NEC and IRB members on ethics issues related to clinical trials and advancement of biotechnology in humans. REECAO is also developing an online submission platform with standardised guidelines for protocol submission and review procedures within the network.   The hot line in French and English developed by REECAO to assist ethics committee members (REECAO-Hotline@univ-catholyon.fr) is available on the website and ready for use by all REECAO’s members. The bibliographic data base has been updated regularly every three months and is available free of access on the website. REECAO has organised one training session for the training of trainers in Mali. This session (the third training session after the training sessions in Guinea in 2017 and Ghana in 2018) was organised from 18-21 March 2019 (in French) for participants from Mali. Topics covered related to ethics principles and methods, governance of NECs and IRBs, ethics of biotechnology applied in humans, ethics and emergency research, clinical trials and related ethical issues, community authorisation and individual consent. The training was done by REECAO’s lead trainers. All six training modules were successfully covered by the training session.
Network	EDCTP2
Call	Ethics and Regulatory capacities 2015

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	Ministère de la Santé et de l’Hygiène Publique - Mali	Coordinator	Mali
3	Centre National de Formation et de Recherche en Santé Rurale	Partner	Guinea, Republic of
5	Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research	Partner	Ghana
7	Université Catholique de Lyon	Partner	France
9	Université des Sciences, des Techniques et des Technologies de Bamako	Partner	Mali