WANETAM-4

The West Africa Networks of Excellence for TB, AIDS, and Malaria (WANETAM) has developed over 3 previous funding cycles for research capacity development in West Africa. The WANETAM-4 proposal will build upon the achievements of the previous cycles to further enhance expertise in clinical research and stronger linkages to global partners and national public Health Institutions (PHIs), with a vision to attain sustainable capacity for conducting clinical research and safeguarding against epidemics in the region. WANETAM-4 will implement its activities through 8 Work Programs, including TB, Malaria, HIV, Special Collaborative Training on Epidemic Preparedness and Surveillance (SCTEPS), Cross-Cutting Training (C-C), Clinical Trial Preparedness, Scientific Program Management, and Dissemination and Exploitation. The TB program aims to unravel the burden and determinants of TB multimorbidity and its impact on treatment outcome, whilst building expertise at partner institutions including PHIs. It will also collaborate with the LSHTM TB Centre, QURE.AI and IAVI to further strengthen capacity for transdisciplinary research on TB. The Malaria program will build capacity to support PHIs to achieve malaria pre-elimination and elimination in the region. It will address disparities in capacity for genomic surveillance, clinical trials, entomology, epidemiology and modelling for African ownership innovation and context-specific interventions for elimination. The HIV program will aim to map out challenges in rapid early childhood diagnosis, to improve data on drug-resistance mutations, and collaborate with the Global HIV vaccine Enterprise of the IAS for capacity training. The lessons learnt from COVID-19 impelled the development of the SCTEPS program, in which training in epidemic preparedness will be in synergy with regional programs and the Scientific Program Management will coordinate with the C-C training program to achieve research expertise.