PMRTC Hosts a Strategic Regional Workshop on Health Data in West Africa

As part of its efforts to build capacity in West Africa, the Network of Excellence for Tuberculosis, AIDS, and Malaria (WANETAM), through its Health Data Research West Africa (HDRWA) platform, organized a regional workshop on health data management and sharing from April 28 to 30, 2024, in Bamako, at the Parasites and Microbes Research and Training Center (PMRTC) in Bamako, Mali.

Coordinated by Professor Mahamadou Ali Thera (Mali), Deputy Coordinator Professor Doumbo Safiatou Niaré, and Training Coordinator Professor Gaye, this session brought together 30 participants from 13 institutions and universities in seven countries in the sub-region, including Mali, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and The Gambia.

The main objective of this training was to impart best practices in health research data management and sharing. Discussions covered the entire data management cycle: from the development of management plans to preservation and secure, ethically compliant sharing. Particular attention was paid to the importance of data integrity, accuracy, and completeness, which are the fundamental pillars of credible scientific research.

The workshop allowed participants to familiarize themselves with the REDCap tool, a data management platform widely used in clinical trials, as well as a library of 24 standard operating procedures (SOPs) dedicated to research data management. Discussions also focused on data governance and the procedures to implement to promote secure and structured sharing.

The HDRWA platform, which hosts this initiative, is a central pillar of WANETAM. With its 25 member institutions spread across 10 West African countries, WANETAM is today a regional benchmark for scientific collaboration. Participants were thanked and wished a safe return to their respective countries.