US CDC Visits Georgian, Moldavian and Ukrainian Institutes to Formulate a Joint Regional Project on TB

03 Aug 2012

Under several STCU Project Development Grants the US CDC-Center for Disease Control
has been formulating proposal concepts with the following institutes in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine

• Gromashevskyi Institute of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases , Kyiv
• Lviv Research Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene
• Moldova Institute of Phthisiopneumology "Chiril Draganiuc”
• Georgian Sakvarelidze National Center for Disease Control and Public Health.

The new project aims to combine the regional capabilities to address Tuberculosis and Multi-Drug Resistant TB. The team of CIS scientists and clinical practitioners, along with CDC staff has been meeting to assess each institutes capabilities in each of the countries to carry out this project. This Joint Project will be submitted to the US NIH-National Institute of Health.

One aspect that pleasantly surprised the US experts, and is very important for the success of the project, is that the Georgian and Moldovan institutes have already acquired a new technology called Gene Expert which can shorten the time for diagnosing TB to several hours compared to multiple weeks as it is currently done. Ukrainian institutes plan to acquire Gene Expert soon. The institutes and clinics that will participate in this work already have established ethical committees or Review Boards to oversee research on patients in order to obtain Informed Consent from the patients. Several hundred patients will be enrolled in the regions for this project.

The next step will be for the CIS team participants to address specific technical issues that are important for carrying out this project. Then, a visit to the US by the CIS team to put the project plan together for NIH submission.