SAVING Consortium, Swiss TPH hold symposium on translating research findings into action
The Sustainable Access and Delivery of New Vaccines In Ghana (SAVING Consortium), in collaboration with the Swiss Tropical Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), held a symposium on February 27 to share experiences in implementation research in the uptake of new medical interventions.
It was on the theme: “Challenges of introducing new health care tools.”
The hybrid event was attended by a number of participants from academia and industry across the world and aimed to promote South-South and North-South knowledge sharing.
In his remarks, Prof. Dr Jung Utzinger, Director of Swiss TPH said the Institute was committed to supporting Ghana produce world class medical interventions that served the needs of the people.
For her part, Prof. Lydia Aziato, Vice Chancellor of the University of Allied Sciences (UHAS) commended the SAVING Consortium for advocating stronger partnerships in research across academia and industry.
Delivering a presentation on the key result factors of the SAVING Consortium, Prof. Margaret Gyapong, a medical anthropologist and Professor of Applied Health Social Science and Global Health at UHA, and the Principal Investigator for the project said the project would bring positive change in the medical sector.
She said the Consortium was organised in a framework of five work packages; namely work packages one and two, managed by the UHAS and responsible for coordinating the activities of the project and capacity building; while the Ministry of Health was focused on Health Policy and Delivery in work package three and the Food and Drugs Authority which constitutes work package four is conducting studies in pharmacovigilance and patient safety.
She said the Swiss TPH which runs work package five, was responsible for knowledge translation and dissemination and conducting other studies on the uptake of the RTS-S malaria vaccine in Ghana.
Prof. Evelyn Ansah, lead for work package “2” said that capacities had been strengthened in areas such as evidence-based decisions in Health technology assessments, procurement and supply chain mechanisms for vaccines and other new medical interventions.
According to Prof. Ansah, a number of personnel from various project work packages have also received fellowships to pursue Masters and PhD programmes in Public Health.
The FDA, represented by Dr George Sabblah shared some experiences from a regulatory perspective especially with reference to its work in increasing uptake of the Med Safety App in Ghana.
Speaking on behalf of the work package lead, Dr Sabblah indicated that IR had provided the necessary tools to interrogate some of the implementation challenges and jointly explore the best ways to mitigate them.
Other presentations on IR were delivered by NOVARTIS, the World Health Organisation (WHO)/TDR, Alliance for Health System and Policy Research, ARUA and Implementation Science.
In all, the SAVING project and its work in implementation research has been highly acclaimed and recommended by partners such as the EDCTP and actually promises to lead the way in translating health research into actionable outcomes.
Established in 2018, the SAVING Consortium project funded by the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) was inspired by the work of the Access and Delivery Partnership (ADP) which began in Ghana and Tanzania.
This ADP project sought to enhance capacity to access and introduce new health technologies for tuberculosis, malaria and other neglected tropical diseases.
BY TIMES REPORTER
