Quintiles opens Ghana office

pharmafile | August 7, 2009 | News story | Research and Development Africa, Quintiles 

Quintiles has opened a new office in Accra, Ghana, which it says will increase capacity to manage clinical studies for diseases such as malaria, HIV and tuberculosis.

The office will give access to the surrounding West African countries, and immediately facilitate monitoring of a large malaria vaccine study now under way.

The new Ghana office is based at the grounds of the University of Ghana at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research. In opening this new facility, Quintiles has worked with Professor Alex Nyarko, director of the institute.

This collaboration will continue and in addition Professor David Ofori-Adjei, a specialist physician at the institute who has more than 30 years' experience studying infectious diseases, has entered into a Partner-Site Agreement with Quintiles.

As part of the agreement with the institute, Quintiles will provide training for new investigators across a range of therapeutic areas, as well as training for clinical research associates (CRAs).

"This expansion offers huge potential to reach patients in Sub-Saharan Africa, which has an estimated population of 760 million people," said Gillian Corken, chief executive, Quintiles Africa.

"Initially the focus will be on diseases such as malaria, TB and HIV. However, we anticipate that as the infrastructure and economies in Africa develop, like many other non-traditional regions before, it will play an increasingly important role in recruiting patients for many other therapeutic areas, such as oncology and cardiovascular."

Quintiles already has an office in South Africa that provides a range of services including clinical operations, regulatory support, partner sites, data management, biostatistics and lab services.

Professor Nyarko said: "We are excited to be working in partnership with a company such as Quintiles. We have the clinical expertise, infrastructure and resources to conduct clinical studies and to play our part in the development of new and better medicines. Working with Quintiles means we can learn and develop expertise in clinical research.

"We are already working with Quintiles on a landmark pediatric malaria study targeted to enroll more than 16,000 patients across seven Sub-Saharan countries."

Quintiles stressed that its ethical policies and procedures are applied in Africa just as they are elsewhere in the world: "Putting patients first is at the heart of everything Quintiles does. Regardless of country, Quintiles strictly adheres to ethical principles articulated by international guidelines such as ICH, the Declaration of Helsinki, CIOMS and The Belmont Report. In addition to following all international guidelines, Quintiles has developed its own extensive internal policies and procedures to safeguard patients."

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