UK clinical trials system not working during epidemics
pharmafile | April 1, 2014 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Farrar, clinical trials, epidemics, welcome trust
The new director of medical charity the Wellcome Trust has told a British newspaper that the slow-paced nature of clinical trials in the country could cost lives during an epidemic.
Jeremy Farrar who is an expert on infectious diseases at Oxford University, has taken over from Sir Mark Walport, who left the medical charity to become the government’s chief science adviser.
He told the Guardian newspaper that ‘profound delays’ in the approvals process for clinical trials means doctors face ‘months of form-filling’ and administrative checks, which make it “impossible to run crucial tests in good time”.
Farrar’s warning is backed by other senior figures including Sir Michael Rawlins, president of the Royal Society of Medicine, and former chairman of NICE and Professor Peter Openshaw, who advised the government during the pandemic flu outbreak in 2009.
Farrar believes that the ‘unwieldy trial system’ puts public health at risk, particularly when pandemic flu and other infectious diseases strike, because doctors have no idea which interventions work.
“The systems we have got in place are not fit for purpose when the situation is moving quickly,” Farrar tells the Guardian. “We have nothing that enables us to respond in real time.”
He argues that the system needed a radical overhaul so emergency trials could launch within 24 hours of an epidemic emerging. “Getting this information early on is critical to inform what we do and how we treat patients. Without it we are completely in the dark.”
The warning comes just one day after the Department of Health approved proposals from the Health Research Authority to streamline clinical trials.
But this may not be enough as some leading experts argue that far more work is needed within the NHS to fast-track trials in an emergency, such as the Swine Flu epidemic that swept through the UK in 2009, or a potential outbreak of the respiratory infection SARS.
“There is no doubt we were very lucky with SARS,” Farrar says. “But nobody knows where it has gone and we don’t have a vaccine. If it were to come back tomorrow and I got infected, the doctor treating me wouldn’t have a clue which drug, if any, to give me.”
The warning also comes as a growing outbreak of Ebola grips Guinea, with the medical charity Medicines San Frontiers saying authorities there are struggling to contain the spread of the disease.
Ben Adams
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