HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Tuberculosis Clinical Trial Sites in Eastern Europe and Central Asia: Brief Landscape Review

Access to new drugs for treating and preventing HIV, viral hepatitis and tuberculosis in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) remains limited. For some patients, clinical trials (CT) represent one of the few opportunities of getting access to life-saving treatment. The request to initiate clinical trials in EECA has been voiced by representatives of EECA countries at numerous meetings with pharmaceutical companies, including community advisory board meetings in Europe (ECAB) and EECA (Eurasian Community for Access to Treatment, ECAT). For some countries like Russia, conducting local clinical trials is a legal prerequisite for drug registration. Overall, there is limited information about CT centres in the region. To accumulate and analyse data about medical institutions potentially having capacity of conducing CTs of drugs for treating HIV, HCV, HBV and TB, EATG launched a pilot monitoring and analysis project. This report represents an update of the first edition produced in 2015.

The countries covered by this edition include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland were covered by the first edition; the second edition does not cover them as it has been decided to focus the project on countries outside the European Union.