The DI-DIDA project's overall objective is to tackle poverty-related infectious diseases in sub-Saharan Africa and African islands by i) strengthening the African research capacities, ii) enhancing technology development in diagnostics and digital technologies in Africa, and iii) encouraging adoption of innovations by sub-Saharan health authorities, clinicians, businesses, and patients. For that, the consortium includes leading partners from four sub-Saharan African countries (Kenya, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda), one from African Islands (Réunion), and the EU. To reach our objectives, we will implement a combination of complementary actions: - Joint research projects on infectious diseases co-morbidities, human-livestock interactions, infectious diseases diagnostic technologies, digital health solutions for Africa, and socio-economic factors of innovation adoption by African people. - The co-development of an innovative low-cost diagnostic and digital/mHealth decision support technology and its integration into existing African digital health infrastructure. - Clinical trials. - A PhD fellowship for students in Africa with joint PhD awarding by EU counterparts. - Research capacity building (management, grant writing, publications etc.) - Staff exchanges. - Training. - Organisation of citizen and brokerage events targeting businesses and policy makers. - A comprehensive dissemination, exploitation, and communication action plan. The impact of this project will be: - Improved research / technology development and manufacturing /clinical trials capacities in sub-Saharan Africa. - New knowledge gained on several topics related with poverty-related infectious diseases. - Increased international networks and reinforcement of the collaboration between Africa and the EU. - A new low-cost diagnostics and decision support technology developed and its adoption fostered by dedicated studies and collaboration with health authorities. - Better informed sub-Saharan populations about infectious diseases.

Details of the Strategic Award made Professor Adrian Hill Oxford University Ebola Phase 1 trial Accelerated Clinical Evaluation of Monovalent vectored Ebola vaccine An outbreak of Ebola in West Africa has spread from Guinea to several countries and presents a continuing threat. WHO have declared this an international public health emergency. The current proposal aims to test the most suitable potential vaccine candidate for Ebola in humans for the first time, in the UK and West Africa, in parallel with collaborators at NIH, to determine its safety and immunogenicity. Successful completion of these trials in 2014 would provide WHO with the option of deploying this vaccine early in 2015.

For over 20 years Children of the 90s (or ALSPAC) has charted the health of 14,500 parents and children. Now in its third decade it has started to study the next generation, the children of the Children of the 90s. The study is unequalled by other population studies because of the breadth and depth of information it holds on participants from before birth over 20 years ago through to the present day. It is internationally renowned and used by researchers worldwide. The data allow researchers to study key periods of development, how certain conditions develop and change over time and are passed (or not) from one generation to the next, and how health is affected by the interplay between genes and other factors like smoking, where people live and the job they do. Our goals are to ensure the resource remains sustainable and open to researchers to use, and that participants remain engaged. We will continue to gather information from the original children through clinical assessments, questionnaires and record linkage, and will be recruiting and gathering data on the children of the children as well as merging genetic data and enhancing research in the exciting new field of epigenomics.