Cherif Mahamoud Sama

A key expert invited to speak at WHO’s recent Health Data Governance Summit was Cherif Mahamoud Sama, a recipient of TDR’s Clinical Research and Development Fellowship (CRDF).

Cherif is an infectious disease specialist who helped set up the Ebola Data Platform during his CRDF placement at the Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO) in Oxford in 2017 – a pivotal period in his life and research career.

He is currently working in Guinea for the Ministry of Health as Regional Health Director. Previously, he worked at the Centre National de Formation et de Recherche en Santé Rurale (National Center for Training and Research in Rural Health) as research manager for the Partnership of Clinical Research in Guinea (PREGUI). Recently, he has taken the lead for the Faranah regional health direction by presidential decree. In this new position, he is responsible for four health districts in Guinea (Dabola, Dinguiraye, Faranah and Kissidougou).

Early years: a big family and big ambition

Cherif was born in Guéckédou, a town in southern Guinea, in a big family with more than 18 children. He grew up in a supportive environment, and both his parents harboured the hope that one day he might become a physician.

In 2002 he fulfilled his parents’ wishes when he graduated in medicine from the University of Conakry in the capital of Guinea. He went on to specialize in paediatrics but his growing interest in health systems management led him to study for a Diploma in Healthcare and Health System Management at Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. Subsequently, he undertook a PhD in infectious diseases at the Graduate School of Biomedical Science at Nagasaki University in Japan. His ambition was high: to help provide evidence to decision-makers to improve health care in his own country and others.

From Guinea to Oxford and a pivotal change in career direction

Guinea is a small country in West Africa. It faces numerous health challenges, the most notable, according to Cherif, being high mortality and morbidity due to infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV. The country is also prone to epidemic diseases such as Ebola, Lassa fever, Marburg and yellow fever – a situation compounded by the weakness of the country’s health system.

Back in 2005 an invitation to a proposal development workshop in Bamako, Mali, introduced Cherif to TDR, so when he later heard about TDR’s CRDF, he decided to apply. At the time his personal goal was to become an independent clinical researcher and he knew that extensive networking, collaboration and partnerships with other peer researchers from different fields and countries would be the route to answering specific questions about poverty-related and neglected diseases. Notably, Guinea as well as other West African countries were just emerging from the massive and deadly 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak that had killed thousands of people.

Cherif sent in his application in 2017; at the time he was working in the Faculty of Medicine at the Gamal Abdel Nasser University of Conakry. His application was successful, and he soon found himself heading to Oxford. There, under the supervision of IDDO Director Philippe Guérin and Associate Director Dr Laura Merson, he learned the wide range of skills that would help him develop the Ebola Data Platform.

The platform was set up by IDDO in 2016 in collaboration with the governments of three of the West African countries most affected by the Ebola outbreak: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. By collating and standardizing clinical, epidemiological and laboratory data from multiple sources in different countries into one central, secure repository, the platform aims to strengthen knowledge and capacity across the health, research and humanitarian communities to reduce the impact of Ebola through responsible data use.

The Ebola Data Platform (available in English and in French) contains data from more than 13 500 patients, and in 2020 it opened to accept data access requests from researchers. It is viewed as a model mechanism for sharing clinical data and helping inform global health responses with relevance for other diseases such as COVID-19. To date it has enabled seven research projects, three of which are led by researchers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. 

Cherif at a data sharing workshop with Professor Philippe Guérin at IDDO in Oxford

While at IDDO, Cherif learned about data collation and management and was introduced to data standardization, mapping, controlled vocabularies, data dictionaries and statistical software for handling and analysing data; he also gained experience in standardizing heterogeneous data, summarizing evidence for a wide audience and data visualization. He deepened his knowledge of the ethics of data sharing and learned about community engagement, particularly in outbreak scenarios. A brief placement with a clinical trial support group helped him understand the clinical trial process and its reporting requirements.

Due to his rich experience at IDDO, he was invited to the Health Data Governance Summit to participate in a panel on “Research data sharing: practices and incentives for governing and sharing research results.”

Life after his fellowship

Cherif credits the fellowship for giving him a foothold in clinical research and helping him to become “an effective and successful team leader.”

He says his time at IDDO prepared him for the next stage of his academic career and his eventual promotion to a professor and more recent appointment as research manager for the research collaboration partnership between the Ministry of Health in Guinea and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States. Since the TDR fellowship, Cherif also won an award (as a scholarship to support his PhD course) from the Global Center of Excellence at Nagasaki University.

Thoughts for the future

In terms of clinical research in Guinea, Cherif believes there is a lack of both human resources and motivation and feels research to improve implementation is not considered important. “Research is not a priority in Guinea,” he says, which is why he always highlights research as a tool that can provide evidence for better decision-making and implementation.

Finally, Cherif, who is now the father of four children (three girls and one boy), wants to enhance the ability of researchers in Guinea to perform research at the global level and to create a strong infrastructure for interdisciplinary research. Most of all, he states, he wants to create a culture of high achievement in Guinea.

For more information on the CRDF, please contact Dr Pascal Launois.