African Partnership for Chronic Disease Research (APCDR)

The African Partnership for Chronic Disease Research (APCDR) was an international network of research groups which work together to facilitate and promote collaborative research of chronic diseases across Africa.

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About the African Partnership for Chronic Disease Research (APCDR)

The APCDR was an international network of research groups which work together to facilitate and promote collaborative research of chronic diseases across Africa. It was co-directed by Dr Manj Sandhu (Wellcome Sanger Institute / University of Cambridge) and Professor Pontiano Kaleebu (MRC/UVRI Uganda).

The APCDR was established in response to the changing distribution of communicable diseases and an increase in the burden of non-communicable diseases and the recognition that low and middle income countries (LMICs), including those in sub-Saharan Africa will need to expand their health care capacities to effectively respond to these epidemiological transitions.

The APCDR recognised that the interrelated risk factors for chronic diseases and substantial resource constraints in LMICs argue for combined strategies to understand their underlying causes and to efficiently implement strategies for effective prevention and long-term management and ensure that African populations benefit from the on-going advances in biomedical research. In order to achieve these aims the APCDR focused its activities on networking, collaborative working, data management and capacity-building.

The Uganda Medical Informatics Centre (UMIC)

Included in the APCDR’s programme of activity, was the Uganda Medical Informatics Centre (UMIC), an infrastructural data centre project in Entebbe Uganda. The UMIC has significantly increased human research capacity in bioinformatics and computational genomics in sub-Saharan Africa by offering access to high-capacity servers and analytical software packages that are able to store and analyse high-volume complex datasets. The UMIC data centre facility enables the integration, curation and analyses of large scale population health resources, including those encompassing genomics, complex phenotypes and clinical data sets.

The UMIC project was co-directed by Dr Manj Sandhu (Wellcome Sanger Institute / University of Cambridge) and Professor Pontiano Kaleebu (MRC/UVRI Uganda). The infrastructural development was facilitated by members of the Sandhu Group and Human Genetics Informatics Group at the Sanger institute.