Second Annual General Meeting Held in Zanzibar
Event Overview: The Eastern African Consortium for Clinical Research (EACCR) recently held its annual general meeting for EACCR3 in Zanzibar Tanzania from 1-2nd August 2023. The two-day event was hosted at the Madinat Al Bahr Hotel with the representation of all partner organizations. The meeting had three general objectives.
1. To evaluate EACCR3 performance in year 2, and share challenges and best practices of project implementation in year.
2. To disseminate research findings and assess student progress with scientific and research work.
3. To clarify year 3 deliverables and Milestones.
Key Discussions: The meeting was hybrid with both physical and online attendance. The morning session was chaired by Prof. Blandina Mmbaga. While the welcome remarks were given by the Director General NIMR Prof Said Aboud. He welcomed the entire team of researchers to Zanzibar and shared about the work they are currently doing. Michelle Nderu from EDCTP shared some highlights on funding highlights. The keynote speech on the Status and treatment of MDR/XDR TB in Tanzania was given by Dr Isack Augustino who is a program manager at the Ministry of Health in Tanzania. Ms. Deborah Alibu shared about emerging issues in EACCR2 Audit & Budget Performance EACCR3.
Session two on day one was chaired by Prof Mfinanga. It covered progress with deliverables & and challenges of implementing EACCR3 activities in period 2 through the work packages; HIV, training, NID, TB, and coordination. These were presented by Dr. Benjamin Watyaba, Prof. Kavishe, Dr. Eric Muok, Prof. Mfinanga, and Dr. Bernard Kikaire supported by Ms. Emily Kabuye respectively.
Participants proposed to come up with a dashboard on the teams’ platform for all work packages, recruit M& E personnel to follow up and report on activities that take place in the consortium, host a meeting for Finance and Administrative staff, and draw timelines for graduate students with respect to funding cycle.
Milestones Achieved: PhD Students sponsored by the consortium presented the progress of their research. These included Dr. Yunia Mayanja, Frank Eric Hassan, and Caroline Amour.
Collaborator Spotlights: In the meeting, The Global Health Network(TGHN) representative Dr. Frank Kagoro shared about the inaugural newsletter which was worked on in collaboration with the other African networks of excellence namely WANETAM, EACCR, and CANTAM, and launched the same week. The newsletter had 1498 of the 13774 recipients open the issue in two days.
