How quickly time has passed since the last entry. I avoided the election debate between our two fearless political leaders last night in favour of catching up with a former colleague visiting from the UK for an investigator meeting. Mind you, I ended the evening sitting on my balcony debating the pros and cons of each political party with my husband anyway, so not a completely politics free night. I suspect with 5 weeks to go to the election, it won't be our last debate on the subject.
Thought I'd share a few of the interesting clinical research stories I've come across in the past few days.
1. Here are a couple of short articles from Nigeria, on a call for more clinical research, and education on clinical research in their country.
http://www.thetidenews.com/article.aspx?qrDate=10/19/2007&qrTitle=Akunyili%20calls%20for%20clinical%20research%20capacity&qrColumn=NEWS
http://www.thetidenews.com/article.aspx?qrDate=10/19/2007&qrTitle=Researchers%20need%20education%20on%20clinical%20trials%20—%20Ikeme&qrColumn=HEALTH
I think this is great to see, and certainly will help set the scene for Africa to be the next powerhouse in clinical trials, after the Asian revolution. Of course, there still exist alot more issues and barriers to research in Africa, to avoid occurences such as that for which Pfizer is currently defending (http://www.outsourcing-pharma.com/news/ng.asp?n=80208-pfizer-nigeria-trovan-clinical-trial), but hopefully time and education will see these ironed out.
2. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/306653/1/.html
Singapore wants to become the world's leading centre for neuroscience and their government are putting in place infrastructure to help facilitate that. Part of that infrastructure, includes the development of a national Academic Clinical Research Organisation (ACRO) to be set up by early next year to encourage more clinical trials to be conducted in Singapore.
I suppose this idea is something like the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre in Australia.
3. http://www.interfax.cn/displayarticle.asp?aid=28794&slug=PHARMACEUTICAL-CRO
This article discusses China as a future CRO powerhouse, the pros and cons of that current environment, in light of heavy competition from India.
What I thought most interesting about that is the reference to the way the Indian government is supporting clinical research in India, which appears to be proving very successful for developing the country's CRO industry - the exemption of CROs from service tax obligations.
4. In light of all these news stories about research in developing countries, it was a timely reminder when I came across this blog today, which among other things has a library with a few articles on the ethics of research in developing countries: http://katescasebook.wordpress.com/reading/
Happy reading!
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