| This project will organise and build sustainable capacity to perform trials of clinical and public health interventions, involving all stakeholders. Training and human capacity building (CB) will be organised so that it strengthens the existing and new academic and vocational curricula. CB is needed on three levels: human resources, equipment, and institutional. The partnership aims at training Master's and PhD students as well as training laboratory, nursing, field, and data staff. The "learning by doing" approach allows participants to apply skills acquired in the ongoing projects ranging from patient-orientated clinical interventions to studies at population level. The "teaching the teachers" approach will provide mentorship to young persons, and so contribute to development of skills and capacity in clinical trials in a sustained manner. INTERACT will also give attention to the more fundamental aspect of developing capacity to identify, initiate and manage successful research in health through a training programme that focuses on the non-technical aspects of research. This empowers local researchers to address local health problems using the resources of international research. Stakeholders will be involved in all phases of CB: in the design, delivery, evaluation and adaptation of the programme. Netherlands experts together with their local counterparts will initially assist in the development of and participate in the training packages; later responsibilities and tasks will gradually shift to the African sites. The project will start with a situational analysis as part of a needs assessment enabling development of a series of tailor-made courses adapted to the needs set by course participants, trainers and educational system. The training techniques that will be encouraged are not only the standard lectures, but will include a variety of appropriate means such as language-appropriate (e.g. English, French) written materials; web-based media; short-term (3 days-1 week) training courses or longer-term (2 weeks-1 month) on-site training visits by qualified staff; and planning and conducting regional workshops on various topics. Collaboration, support and supervision from the Netherlands will be organised per project. Regarding human resources we aim to safeguard the available research capacity by offering job and career opportunities; to recruit young talent and train these by hands-on research and academic courses; and to train non-scientific support staff for relevant tasks in a variety of applied courses. Concerning material resources, basic equipment where not available will be purchased; and equipment for specific research activities will be bought. Finally, the institutions need strengthening in terms of their capacity for proposal writing, and conducting, analysing, and reporting of research, and in terms of institutional (scientific and ethical) review. Adoption of and adherence to standards of work (standard operating procedures) in clinic, laboratory, field and data room will be central. INTERACT's activities will concentrate on Faculty of Medicine (FoM) of Makerere University (MU) and the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) in Uganda and the Treatment and Research for AIDS Center (TRAC) in Rwanda. FoM/IDI and TRAC are affiliated with the MOH, the routine health services and the University, but are dissimilar in many other aspects. IDI is a strong treatment and training centre which needs up scaling of research activities and outreach to the community. INTERACT will support the newly launched urban/family health care plan, which links IDI to the network of Kampala City Council (KCC) clinics. FoM has a Master's programme for clinical specialties, which includes scientific research and is in the process of setting up a Master's in Health Sciences Research. INTERACT will both make use of and add to these courses. There is a strong need for research opportunities and supervision for Master's students, and - to achieve this - for promotion to PhD of staff members. Furthermore, there is currently a gap between senior-middle on the one hand and junior faculty and health workers on the other, which needs to be narrowed. The health institutions in Rwanda have had much less exposure to and experience with research, and therefore the programme will strengthen the scientific capacity of TRAC and Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Kigali (CHUK). CHUK is one of four referral hospitals in Rwanda and a training hospital for the FoM in Butare, which offers Bachelors and Masters, but no PhD degrees. To stimulate academic research, CHUK established a "Cellule de Recherche" to supervise students and trainees in research and evidence based medicine. There is need for more supervisors with PhD degrees. In the partnership there will be an exchange of clinicians, laboratory staff and scientists between Rwanda and Uganda. The IDI aims for a role as a regional training institute for clinicians and medical scientists, and through this Programme we will strengthen this role. The IDI will be involved in the clinical training of Rwandese clinicians and scientists. Ugandan researchers will participate in studies at the primary health care level in Rwanda. |
