It is almost night and Dr Felix Akwaso carefully navigates a muddy, winding road on his motorcycle deep in Kwilu Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). On the back of his bike: a patient from a remote village that tested positive for the worms that cause river blindness. This is just part of a day’s work for Dr Felix, who  is the Principal Investigator for DNDi’s river blindness trial at Masi-Manimba General Reference Hospital. He drops off the patient and prepares for a full day of extracting the worm-containing ‘nodules’ from patients. These nodules will be tested to see how the investigational treatment works against these filarial worms.

Dr Felix was central to kicking off one of two new Phase II studies for river blindness initiated by DNDi and partners in 2021, but he and his team are no strangers to clinical trials. In 2012, DNDi began its trials here for sleeping sickness – renovating the hospital ward, training staff, and getting the site up to international standards.  No one at the hospital had ever worked on a clinical trial, but six years later their hard work paid off with the registration of the first all-oral treatment for sleeping sickness – an achievement Dr Felix is immensely proud of.

Like so many regions of the DRC, people in this area are at risk of multiple NTDs. Locating trials for new treatments in affected communities is key for DNDi, and the researchers at Masi-Manimba are a shining example of the committed partners who propel our shared progress. Dr Felix thinks the sky is the limit for his team at Masi. ‘For the team here, this is a huge scientific step forward. Maybe we can even start running trials for other diseases,’ he says.