Four new projects supported by Global Health EDCTP3 have launched to develop transformative tools that improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases in sub-Saharan Africa. Together, these initiatives represent an investment of more than €9 million and address critical challenges including drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), TB recurrence, malaria treatment and the diagnosis of childhood infections.
From platforms that accelerate the evaluation of drug-susceptibility tests to child-friendly medicines and rapid diagnostic technologies, these projects aim to move innovative solutions closer to real-world use, making health interventions more accessible, affordable and better suited to the needs of communities in resource-limited settings.
These are the remaining four initiatives selected under the 2025 Transformative Innovations in Global Health call, which is providing over €20 million to advance innovative approaches that improve the uptake, accessibility and implementation of health solutions in sub-Saharan Africa.
R2D2-xDRTB: a shared platform to fast-track tests for drug-resistant TB
Around 400,000 people develop drug-resistant tuberculosis every year, yet fewer than half receive the right treatment. While new drug-susceptibility tests are being developed, validating them one by one is slow and expensive, making it difficult for countries to identify which tests are best suited to their needs.
‘TB is a major public health challenge in European and sub-Saharan African countries. The coordinated international approach will accelerate and standardise evaluations, providing evidence of great value to decision-makers in both regions.’
Dr Nestani Tukvadze, National Center for Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases, Georgia, and Swiss TPH, Switzerland.
R2D2-xDRTB will expand the NIH-funded R2D2 TB Network, an established international platform that has already generated comparable data on more than 40 TB products, into a dedicated evaluation system for drug-susceptibility testing. The project will enrol 500 adults and adolescents with a positive rifampicin resistance result, plus 100 with rifampicin-sensitive infections, across sites in South Africa and Georgia, and will compare candidate tests against gold-standard methods.
Global Health EDCTP3 funding: €2 million, with an additional €158,790 in co-investment from the University of Heidelberg.
RECENT-TB: stopping tuberculosis from coming back
Roughly 1.5 to 2 million people are treated for TB in sub-Saharan Africa each year, yet around one in ten will develop the disease again within two years. Although preventive treatment after recovery could reduce this risk, it is currently only recommended for people living with HIV, as providing it to everyone would be costly and difficult to implement.
RECENT-TB will recruit 1,800 people in South Africa and Uganda who have recently completed TB treatment to test whether a 12-week course of isoniazid and rifapentine (3HP) can prevent recurrence, with participants followed for two years. The project will also identify simple risk markers to determine which patients are most likely to benefit, helping target preventive treatment where it is needed most.
‘The RECENT-TB project has the support of the national TB control programmes in Uganda and South Africa. They are key stakeholders, and the results of the study should feed directly into their planning and will be useful for other sub-Saharan African countries.’
Dr Stella Zawedde-Muyanja, Scientific Lead at the Infectious Diseases Institute, College of Health Sciences, Makerere University, Uganda.
Global Health EDCTP3 funding: €2.3 million, with an additional €41,000 co-investment provided by the Ministry of Health of Uganda.
ASAQ-PAC: a child-friendly malaria pill to help slow the spread of drug resistance
Malaria still kills around 450,000 people every year, mostly young children in sub-Saharan Africa. While artemisinin combination therapies remain the main treatment, growing drug resistance threatens their effectiveness. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends using different treatment combinations to slow resistance, but one important option, artesunate-amodiaquine (ASAQ), is not currently available in a child-friendly formulation.
‘The ASAQ-PAC project will provide key evidence of a child-friendly version of ASAQ that will set the stage for WHO prequalification and, ultimately, uptake by malaria control programmes to use it alongside other ACTs to diversify treatments and delay the development of resistance.’
Prof. Bob Taylor, Professor of Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford, UK, and ASAQ-PAC coordinator.
ASAQ-PAC will develop child-friendly ‘MicroCoat’ micropellets that mask the bitter taste of amodiaquine and can be easily given to young children. A clinical trial in Malawi will compare the new formulation with standard tablets, while another study will assess whether combining it with child-friendly primaquine could help reduce malaria transmission. The project aims to provide a practical treatment option that can help protect existing malaria medicines from resistance.
Global Health EDCTP3 funding: €2 million.
PATHFINDER: a lab-on-a-chip device to work out why a child has a fever
Fever in children can be caused by many different infections, but identifying the cause is often difficult. In many settings, limited diagnostic options can lead to misdiagnosis or unnecessary antibiotic use, contributing to the growing challenge of antimicrobial resistance.
‘Fever is a common symptom during an infection, but it can be caused by multiple different types of pathogens, so diagnosis can be difficult. This means children may not get the right treatment, and antimicrobials are overused, driving antimicrobial resistance.’
Dr François Kiemde, Scientific Lead at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique et Technologique / Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé, Burkina Faso.
PATHFINDER will develop a rapid diagnostic device that identifies infections by analysing the body’s response rather than detecting individual pathogens. The portable “lab-on-chip” system aims to provide a probable diagnosis within 20 minutes and will be tested in 1,000 children with fever in Burkina Faso and Ghana, supporting more targeted treatment and helping reduce unnecessary antibiotic use.
Global Health EDCTP3 funding: €2.7 million.
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- Publication date
- 10 November 2026
- Author
- Global Health EDCTP3 Joint Undertaking