Ethiopia Trachoma Adaptive Trial Planning Grant

Date of Start : November 2022

Date of Completion: February 2028

Funder: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Aim: Develop an enhanced monitoring system for Ethiopia's "Child MDA" program to accelerate trachoma elimination.

Background :

Ethiopia is implementing more frequent than annual (MFTA) azithromycin mass drug administration (MDA), including an additional ‘child MDA’ for children aged 1–9 years, to accelerate trachoma elimination in persistent districts. However, evidence for its added effectiveness is limited. We designed a three-arm Adaptive Staggered Parallel Effectiveness–Implementation Hybrid Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial (ASPECT) to monitor and evaluate both the effectiveness and implementation of child MDA compared with standard annual MDA. The Gates Foundation funded the trial protocol development, including technical expertise for the statistical analysis plan, trial simulations, policy profile, and communication strategy.

Progress:

The protocol development is completed and is ready for implementation.