Brazil’s Ministry of Health plans to spend US$ 3 million (8 million reais) on the construction of four clinical research centers this year. The centers will serve to test new medications and treatments involving volunteers.
According to the director of the Ministry’s Department of Science and Technology (Decit), Reinaldo Guimarães, the studies will be geared to health care in the areas where the country’s public health needs are most pressing, such as Aids and tuberculosis.
In the case of Aids, he explained that the research can help to test new combinations in the cocktail of medicines.
“For all the diseases for which treatment depends on a cocktail of drugs, it is very difficult to get laboratories interested in financing clinical research,” Guimarães affirmed.
The research centers will be linked to teaching hospitals accredited by the Ministries of Health and Education.
“Clinical research is more and more important throughout the world as a component of health research,” Guimarães said, recalling that, nowadays, no new medication, vaccine, or diagnostic procedure is made available to the public without having first passed through human testing on volunteers.
The goal is to build 12 centers by 2007.
ABr
