DZIF African Partner Institutions (API)

The DZIF TI African Partner Institutions (TI API) is an infrastructure that aims at creating a long-term partnership between German DZIF institutions and African partner institutes to collaborate in infectious disease (ID) research. The partner institution of Heidelberg is the CRSN in Nouna, Burkina Faso A collaboration was initiated in the funding period of 2011 and 2012 and was further developed during the funding period 2013-2015 through the joint biomedical research project on Fever Without Source (FWS) in children. This infrastructure completes the DZIF concept with projects that are performed in developing countries and that are characterized by a high prevalence of many IDs and emerging drug resistances.The first overarching goal is to establish a common platform for other TIs and TTUs to enable performance of clinical/diagnostic trials and epidemiological studies on IDs under endemic conditions and to contribute to research capacity building in resource-poor countries. The German DZIF institutes and their respective partners in Africa worked together in establishing the infrastructures necessary to conduct intended research. During the current funding period (2016 – 2018), the platform for the performance of diagnostic trials shall be established and two diagnostic trials shall be performed. Furthermore, there will more investigations to analyse outstanding samples of the FWS-respository, which were collected and analysed during the last funding phase.

Epidemiology and Serology of Hepatitis in a DZIF African Partner Institution

The objective is to provide epidemiologic baseline information, which allows quantifying treatment needs for chronic HBV/HCV infection in Nouna, Burkina Faso. For this purpose, a laboratory method will be established for sample analysis using DBS (antibodies, HBV DNA; HCV RNA). The study population is a representative sample of the NHHPS district population.