Experimental design

CAPE TOWN Medical Research Council (MRC) president Anthony MBewu yesterday sought to reassure Parliament that the organisations work on the international Ushershell microbicide trial, which was stopped early after 35 women developed HIV, had been conducted to the highest scientific and ethical standards.

Speech by Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang at the Launch of: (I) The Ethics Guidelines' Ethics in Health Research: Principles, Structures and Processes and (II) The Guidelines on Ethics for Medical Research: HIV Preventive Vaccine Research (MRC Book 5).

CLOSING DATE: 30^TH SEPTEMBER 2009

Job Description: Study-Coordinator

Reports to: Clinic Manager

The Clinic Coordinator is a registered nurse who provides day-to-day clinical skills for HIV related studies, including, coordinating study personnel and patients and data collection. The research is required to be carried out at various sites based at different clinics. The position is for a confident individual with excellent communication skills, who has the ability to coordinate work with a range of health professionals in a highly stressful environment.

Closing Date: 30th September 2009

NDLELA HIV RESEARCH AND CLINICAL TRAILS UNIT a division of the Wits Health Consortium (Pty) Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the University of the Witwatersrand, is seeking a suitably qualified person to fill the following position based at Agincourt, just outside of Bushbuck Ridge:

Under a new project co-sponsored by the World Health Organization announced Friday, physicians and researchers across the globe will have free online access to the results of the latest clinical trials in reproductive health, infectious diseases, vaccines and other medical fields. As of Friday, all randomized controlled trials considered the best way to compare the success of various methods of disease prevention or treatment that receive approval from the WHO ethics review board will be assigned a number and catalogued under a register set up by WHO and an independent publishing house, London-based Current Controlled Trials Ltd.

For a payment of R150 Albertina Shakoane will provide five litres of her mauve-coloured tea she claims will cure AIDS. She makes the infusion from a small leafy plant, which her father pointed out to her when she was growing up in Cullinan, describing it as a medicinal Jack of all trades. Shakoane says she has 20 customers, and as news spreads in her community, demand is growing. Shakoane's treatments are illegal. The World Health Organisation estimates that 80% of people living in Africa use traditional medicines. At present 70% of South Africans consult the more than 200000 traditional healers in the country. The African traditional medicines market is unregulated, leaving consumers vulnerable to unsubstantiated claims and potentially lethal remedies. There are countless concoctions on the market that have absolutely no therapeutic benefit. Diluted Jeyes Fluid, industrial solvents and battery acid are just some of the dubious ingredients commonly found in fake traditional medicines.The ever-increasing numbers of people infected with HIV, few of whom have access to antiretroviral medicines, are contributing to the demand for traditional medicines. Traditional remedies, which have evolved amongst indigenous communities in SA over thousands of years of careful use and observation, hold hope of new treatments and perhaps even cures for diseases. The problem is sifting through the claims, and deciding which remedies to subject to scientific scrutiny with the limited resources available to conduct clinical trials, says Gilbert Matsabisa, head of the Medical Research Council's Indigenous Knowledge Systems health unit. An initiative launched at the weekend by the health department may help efforts to find the effective traditional remedies. The National Reference Centre for African Traditional Medicines is a virtual institution that will be jointly managed by the Medical Research Council and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). It plans to establish a network of experts and facilities, and a database that captures information on traditional remedies and encourages people who bring cures to track the progress of research into their products. We expect samples to come in from a wide range of sources, from plants that are widely used to those that are not. We will prioritise (claims) based on their usage and national priorities, says Vinesh Maharaj, business manager for bio-prospecting at the CSIR's Biochemtek division. (Source: Tamar Kahn: Business Day, 3 September 2003)

The Health Systems Research Unit at the Medical Research Council, South Africa's pleased to announce a three-day training course: Ran- domised Controlled Trials.

Randomised controlled trials are the most reliable way to evaluate the effects of an intervention, be it a drug, a new technology, a new way of training health care providers or organising health care.

Do you plan to evaluate an intervention? Would you like to learn more about the most reliable way to undertake an RCT? From among the most experienced triallists in the world? In December a team of triallists from all over the world will be gathering in Cape Town, to discuss ways of improving the design, con- duct, use and usefulness of RCT's. All are members of the PRACTIHC group, a European Union project to develop techniques for widening the use of pragmatic RCT's in health care decision-making. As part of this meeting the group will be offering a training course in RCT conduct.

The course is open to all. There is no cost for the training course itself for participants from developing countries. The course fee for developed country par- ticipants, or employees of agencies able to sponsor such training will be R5000. Participants will in general be expected to cover their own travel, subsistence and accommodation costs.

The course will cover all the stages of designing a trial and preparing a protocol. The structure of the course will follow that logic, and participants are expected to bring along a question which they wish to use as the basis of an RCT. The learning objectives of this course are to familiarise participants with the purpose, terminology and concepts of randomised controlled trials, and to encourage them to undertake trials which are relevant to priority health and health care problems.

Enquiries or applications is mailto:mandy.salomo@mrc.ac.za or by Fax to Merrick Zwarenstein +27-21-938-0483

The assessment of client satisfaction, forms an important part of the management of a health facility, especially after the adoption of the Batho Pele (People First) and the Patients Right Charter. The main objective in undertaking this research study was to develop an instrument that would assess the satisfaction levels of clients utilising two district hospitals in South Africa. The hospitals were the Gordonia Hospital in Upington, and the East Griqualand and Usher Memorial Hospitals in Kokstad.