Established in 2018, the Sustainable Access and Delivery of New Vaccines In Ghana (SAVING Consortium) funded by the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) was inspired by the work of the Access and Delivery Partnership (ADP) which began in Ghana and Tanzania.
This ADP project sought to enhance capacity to access and introduce new health technologies for tuberculosis, malaria and other neglected tropical diseases.
The programme, which was implemented by key departments of the Ministry of Health, Ghana Health Service and institutions like the Food and Drugs Authority was sustained in the Phase 2 of the ADP which formed the consortium to continue working together to identify, and address implementation challenges involved in the nation wide implementation of the new malaria vaccine at the time and also strengthen both individual and institutional capacities in implementation research.
Using Implementation Research (an approach to understanding and addressing barriers to effective and quality implementation of health interventions, strategies and policies) as a guiding principle, the SAVING Consortium is leading the process of demand-driven health research by involving stakeholders/implementors to address implementation challenges in the deployment of new health interventions in a bid to realize the outcomes of Universal Health Coverage in Ghana.
In an effort to further promote South-South and North-South knowledge sharing in its 4th year of implementation, the SAVING Consortium organized a symposium in collaboration with the Swiss Tropical Public Health Institute(Swiss TPH), on 27th February 2025 under the theme, “ challenges of introducing new health care tools”. The hybrid event brought together a number of participants from academia and industry across the world who shared experiences in implementation research in the uptake of new medical interventions.
In a welcome remarks to commence the symposium, Prof. Dr. Jung Utzinger, Director of Swiss TPH indicated the Institute’s profound appreciation to be hosting this event and highlighted aspects of its studies on entry protocols for new health interventions.
Prof. Lydia Aziato, Vice Chancellor of the University of Allied Sciences (UHAS) in her remarks commended the SAVING Consortium for the immense work and impact being made in IR and advocated for for stronger partnerships in research across academia and industry.
Delivering a presentation on the key results factors of the SAVING Consortium, Prof. Margaret Gyapong, a medical anthropologist and Professor of Applied Health Social Science and Global Health at UHAS and also the Principal Investigator for the project thoroughly discussed the various stages of the IR design and highlighted some of the significant impact of the project along the access and delivery value chain.
According to Prof. Gyapong, the consortium is organized in a framework of five workpackages; namely workpackages one and two managed by the UHAS and responsible for coordinating the activities of the project and capacity building; while the Ministry of Health is focused on Health Policy and Delivery in workpackage three and the Food and Drugs Authority which constitutes workpackage four is conducting studies in pharmacovigilance and patient safety.
The Swiss TPH which runs workpackage five, is responsible for knowledge translation and dissemination and conducting other studies on the uptake of the RTS-S malaria vaccine in Ghana.
Discussing some of the highlights of the project, Prof. Gyapong reiterated the fact that this project has built a formidable network of individuals and institutions that are working together in IR to promote both south-south and north-south collaboration for new medical interventions.
Prof. Evelyn Ansah, lead for work package two responsible for capacity building indicated that capacities have been strengthened in areas such as evidence-based decisions in Health Technology Assessments, Procurement and Supply Chain mechanisms for vaccines and other new medical interventions.
Furthermore, through the instrumentality of the SAVING Consortium, specialized virtual and on-site training in the WHO Massive Open Online Course in Implementation Reseach have been held leading to the certification of over 40 participants across Ghana’s health sector. According to Prof. Ansah,, a number of personnel from various project workpackages have also received fellowships to pursue Masters and PhD programmes in Public Health.
She added that, one significant innovation introduced by this project has been the concept of having experienced scientists being attached to individual workpackages as embedded scientists to strenghten institutional capacities in IR through various writeshops that are organized.
Presentations from work packages three and four namely Ministry of Health and Food and Drugs Authority shared light on how IR is being deployed in varied areas such as Improving maternal and child health services, strengthening disease control programs (e.g., malaria, HIV/AIDS, Neglected Tropical Diseases), and the introduction of new technologies and procedures.
The FDA represented by Dr. George Sabblah shared some experiences in IR from a regulatory perspective especially with reference to its work in increasing uptake of the Med Safety App in Ghana.
Speaking on behalf of the work package lead, Dr. Sabblah indicated that IR has provided the necessary tools to interrogate some of the implementation challenges and jointly explore the best ways to mitigate them.
Other presentations on IR were delivered by NOVARTIS, WHO/TDR, Alliance for Health System and Policy Research, ARUA and Implementation Science.
In all, the SAVING project and its work in implementation research has been highly acclaimed and recommended by partners such as the EDCTP and actually promises to lead the way in translating health research into actionable outcomes.
