Research sites

A standardised process for evaluating the real life safety and effectiveness of current and alternative ant malarial treatments will be developed and implemented.
During the initial phase of INESS, the current first-line ACTs in Ghana and Tanzania will be evaluated. This will provide information on their safety and effectiveness, which is still unavailable despite their large scale utilisation.
Once a new anti-malarial is registered in a participating country, it will be introduced through the routine public health services in the districts hosting the selected INDEPTH DSS sites. New drugs will be evaluated using standardised systems to generate effectiveness and safety assessments which are comparable to those for currently recommended drugs.

INESS will be undertaken at eight sites in four sub-Saharan countries – including some of the world’s most severely malaria-affected communities. The four-year INESS project takes place in eight INDEPTH Demographic Surveillance System sites (DSS) in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mozambique and Tanzania.

The extensive geographic reach of the project provides an important opportunity to evaluate ant malarial drugs over a wide range of epidemiological and health system settings. The INDEPTH DSS sites have functioned for many years as health and demographic observatories. INESS studies target a population of more than 2 million participants.
Following over a million Africans across eight dispersed districts
INESS will consist of three key project components:

  • Strengthening existing DSS sites to undertake effectiveness and safety studies.
  • Strengthening health facilities and their links to the DSS sites.
  • Implementing effectiveness and safety studies.

The research will focus on ACTs that are currently recommended by the WHO, and which pair up artemisinin derivatives with one or more antimalarials of a different class, e.g., Artemether-lumefrantine, Artesunate + amodiaquine, Artesunate + mefloquine, Artesunate + sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, among others.