Highly Efficient Clinical Trials

Populations living in resource-limited settings are disproportionately affected by non-communicable and infectious diseases, experience shorter life expectancy, and have rates of child mortality that effect developmental and economic potential at national and regional levels. ¹ The countries with the greatest burdens of disease are nearly consistently located in the global south, environments that have historically lacked adequate healthcare infrastructure. ² While medicine and public health has always prided itself with caring for the disadvantaged, partnerships between well-resourced medical researchers and colleagues in resource limited settings has been hampered by a lack of interest, an assumption that poor uptake of medical interventions will occur, and the emergence of drug-resistant infections. ³ , ⁴ Within this belief, the prevalence of clinical trials among populations in resource limited settings were relatively rare, and typically poorly funded and planned. ⁵ A 2002 study found that 0.1% of trials conducted globally are done in sub-Saharan Africa even though 25% of the global burden of disease is there. ⁵