There are about 129 clinical studies being (or have been) conducted in Rwanda. The country of the clinical trial is determined by the location of where the clinical research is being studied. Most studies are often held in multiple locations & countries.
The use of insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) has contributed to the substantial reduction in malaria cases and deaths. This progress is threatened by increasing resistance in mosquito populations to commonly used insecticides. Newly developed, next-generation ITNs using two insecticides or an insecticide synergist and an insecticide are effective against resistant mosquitoes, but large-scale uptake of these nets has been slow due to higher costs and lack of enough evidence to support broad policy recommendations. This observational study will occur alongside a pilot distribution of next-generation ITNs and collect data over three years on their entomological and epidemiological impact as well as anthropological factors that influence their uptake and use. Enhanced data collection will occur in three districts: one district that will receive Interceptor G2 ® ITN (BASF) and two comparator districts, one that will receive standard pyrethroid-only ITNs and one that will receive standard pyrethroid-only ITNs and indoor residual spraying (IRS). Data will be collected on malaria vector bionomics, disease epidemiology, and human behaviors in order to help better demonstrate the public health value of next-generation ITNs and to support donors, policymakers, and National Malaria Control Programs in their ITN decision-making and planning processes.
Policy makers in Rwanda have recently highlighted the importance of promoting healthy diets and lifestyle in response to rapidly increasing rates of obesity. This project will provide evidence on shifts in diet and nutritional status in urban dwellers as compared to the traditional diet and lifestyle in rural areas as a basis for a targeted public health policy for Rwanda.
The burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Rwanda is adding to the health burden in the country which is facing the nutritional transition and the double burden of malnutrition. Diet is an established risk factor in NCDs, hence the importance to assess accurately the changes in dietary habits occurring in the population. The objective is to develop and validate a food frequency questionnaire in Rwanda.
This protocol describes an evaluation of the CyberRwanda program, a digital health tool designed with and for adolescents in Rwanda, with a focus on successful futures, broadly, and family planning and reproductive health, more specifically. CyberRwanda is a tablet-based system that provides information on family planning and reproductive health through a set of vignettes. The program also allows users to order and purchase contraceptives, with pick up at nearby participating pharmacies. The program will be implemented in schools in eight districts in Rwanda. The investigators will conduct a 3-arm, cluster, randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of CyberRwanda on three primary outcomes: uptake of a contraceptive method, initiation of childbearing, and HIV testing. The investigators will compare two implementation models (facilitated and self-service) to a control arm at the school (cluster) level. The study will enroll 60 schools (20 per arm) and 100 students per school, and follow students for 24 months.
Soil-transmitted helminths (STHs) are a group of parasitic worms that infect millions of children in sub-tropical and tropical countries, resulting in malnutrition, growth stunting, intellectual retardation and cognitive deficits. To control the morbidity due to these worms, school-based deworming programs are implemented, in which anthelminthic drugs are administered to children without prior diagnosis. The continued fight against these worms is aided by the London declaration on neglected tropical diseases, which helps sustain and expand global drug donation program, resulting in an unprecedented growth of deworming programs. However, the high degree of drug pressure makes deworming programs vulnerable to the development of anthelmintic resistance because they only rely on one drug with sometimes suboptimal efficacy and there is no availability of alternative drugs. Moreover, at present, there is no surveillance system to monitor the emergence and spread of anthelmintic resistance. It remains unclear to what extent the efficacy of drugs may have dropped and whether anthelmintic resistance is already present. This project aims to strengthen the monitoring and surveillance of drug efficacy and anthelmintic resistance in STH programs. As such, it will support deworming programs in their quest to eliminate STHs as a public health problem. The overall aim of this study is to pilot a surveillance system to assess anthelmintic drug efficacy and the emergence of AR in 9 countries were drug pressure has been high over a long period of time. The specific objectives are to: 1. Assess the prevalence of moderate/heavy intensity infections of the different STH 2. Assess the drug efficacy of a single dose of BZ drugs against STH infections in these countries 3. Assess the frequency of the ß-tubulin SNPs linked to BZ resistance 4. Identify implementation-related barriers and opportunities for monitoring drug efficacy and AR in national PC programs for STH. 5. Expand the Starworms repository of STH field samples
This is a Phase 1/2 study to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics of two broadly neutralizing monoclonal human antibodies (bNAbs), 3BNC117-LS-J, which targets the CD4 binding site on HIV-1 envelope protein, and 10-1074-LS-J which targets the V3 loop of HIV-1 envelope protein. The hypothesis is that the two antibodies will be safe for healthy HIV-1 uninfected adults when co-administered subcutaneously or intravenously and, after subcutaneous administration in the optimal ratio, each antibody will maintain serum levels >10 µg/ml for at least 3 months in HIV-uninfected participants.
This feasibility study serves to determine if it is possible to perform a powered randomized control trial of high-dose intravenous vitamin C (ascorbic acid) as an adjunctive medication in the management of sepsis and septic shock in Rwanda. Further data will be collected including Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score, Universal Vital Assessment (UVA) score, duration of vasopressors, mortality and other key indicators to possibly determine the impact of vitamin C on organ failure and clinical course. A total of 24 patients with a diagnosis of sepsis or septic shock will be recruited after obtaining informed consent at the University Teaching Hospital of Kigali (CHUK) and will be randomized in a 1:1 fashion to receive drug or placebo. Both treatment arms will receive standard treatment (intravenous fluids, antibiotics, vasopressors as needed, etc.) in addition to study drug or placebo. During the course of the study, any difficulties encountered will be recorded and will inform process improvements for a full randomized control, if it is indeed considered possible to perform the definitive trial.
The main objective of this study is to understand the links and outcomes of adoption of a cleaner cookstove/fuel and exposure to a personal empowerment training on women's health outcomes in a Congolese refugee camp in Rwanda, with a focus on gender-based violence (GBV).
Isolation caused by lack of transportation infrastructure affects almost every facet of life for the rural poor. Without adequate transportation access, families cannot access schools, health care, employment, or local markets to sell and buy goods. The World Bank estimates that nearly a billion people worldwide lack access to an all-season road within two kilometers, illustrating the scope of the problem, and the challenge of addressing it at scale. Bridges to Prosperity (B2P) is a non-profit organization that builds footbridges to connect rural communities facing isolation to road networks and critical destinations and services. B2P has constructed more than 280 footbridges in 20 countries, an infrastructure intervention that is cost-effective, durable, and relatively simple to scale. B2P's field program in Rwanda started in 2012 and has led to the completion of 37 footbridges that have created new safe access for an estimated 225,000 people. Over the next five years, B2P plans to construct approximately 350 footbridges in Rwanda. This rapid program growth presents an unprecedented opportunity for rigorous investigation of the effects of new footbridges on a number of key economic, health, agricultural and education outcomes for rural communities. As such, the research team has been brought on to carry out an impact evaluation of B2P-constructed footbridges in rural Rwanda. This protocol is for the first phase of the study and will focus on 12 footbridge sites and 12 comparison sites over the course of one year, while the larger study will encompass approximately 350 sites over the planned five-year construction period. The results of this first phase will inform the design of the larger study.
A partially blinded randomised controlled non-inferiority trial comparing the efficacy, tolerability and safety of Triple ACTs artemether-lumefantrine+amodiaquine (AL+AQ) and artesunate-mefloquine+piperaquine (ASMQ+PPQ) and the ACTs artemether-lumefantrine+placebo (AL+PBO), artesunate-mefloquine+placebo (ASMQ+PBO) (with single-low dose primaquine in some sites) for the treatment of uncomplicated Plasmodium falciparum malaria to assess and compare their efficacy, safety, tolerability.