FHI 360’s China Tuberculosis Clinical Trials Consortium (CTCTC) provides mentoring and advice on the critical aspects of maintaining a successful tuberculosis (TB) clinical trial network in China, including:
- Training and quality monitoring to follow good clinical practice guidelines
- Establishing and maintaining reliable and accurate TB laboratory services
- Conducting ethical and effective patient recruitment and retention
- Ensuring high-quality data collection and statistical analyses
Nineteen of China’s top TB clinical centers were chosen to participate in the consortium’s research network. The network and the individual sites are funded by the Government of China. Our site assessments reveal that more than 26,000 individuals, between 5 percent and 12 percent of whom have multidrug-resistant TB, visit network hospitals every year at six of the centers in the network. Training and mentoring at these sites is ongoing.
The first enrollment in a TB clinical trial occurred in 2016 and is ongoing. There are plans for enrolling patients in the global Standard Treatment Regimen of Anti-tuberculosis Drugs for Patients with MDR-TB (STREAM, stage 2) trial in 2017.