Organisation that leads the work package: Centre de Recherches Médicales de Lambaréné (CERMEL)

Objectives

  • Generate reliable data necessary for future clinical trials
  • Provide state-of-the-art data on infectious diseases in the country
  • Collect data from population-based studies on infectious diseases including NTDs and COVID-19
  • Collect data from outpatient departments of health-care centers
  • Report on the frequency of diseases encountered to provide an overview on the potential of each site for conducting epidemiological studies and clinical trials for potential funders from public and industry sources
  • To investigate the features and viral dynamics of SARS-COV-2 on infected children and pulmonary TB/COVID19 co-infected adults.

Description of work

This work package aims to perform epidemiological studies in the field of malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, NTDs, and COVID-19.

  • Task 1.1 Establish a task group for reviewing and approving epidemiological studies (Lead: CERMEL; others: FCRM, UY1, UB, CRFiLMT, Unikin, CIRMF, USS-Libreville, HerpeZ, AMC)
  • Task 1.2 Epidemiological studies on NTDs prevalence and drug resistance in rural and urban settings (Lead: CERMEL; others: EKUT, CRFilMT, Unikin, FCRM)
  • Task 1.3 Determine the current prevalence of NTDs and malaria 20 years after the introduction of ivermectin-based preventive chemotherapy (Lead: CRFilMT; other: UY1)
  • Task 1.4 Investigate various factors that can cause antimalarial drug resistance (Lead: UY1; other: CERMEL, EKUT, FCRM, Unikin)
  • Task 1.5 Investigate TB/HIV and HIV/malaria co-infection in urban and rural areas (Lead: FCRM and UCL; other: UY1, HERPEZ, Unikin)
  • Task 1.6 Investigate COVID-19 seroprevalence (Lead: FCRM and Unikin; other: UY1, HERPEZ, UCL)
  • Task 1.8 Assess the prevalence of TB/COVID-19 co-infections and evaluate post-TB lung damages in cured pulmonary TB patients vs cured TB/COVID-19 co-infected individuals in Cameroon (Lead: UY1)