The African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID), based at Redeemer’s University Nigeria, is driving biomedical innovation at the leading edge of pathogen surveillance, diagnostics, and outbreak response. Established in 2013 and supported a variety of funders including the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the World Bank, the ACEGID platform is building genomics pipelines, advancing our understanding of microbial threats, and training the next generation of African clinicians and scientists how to identify, manage and control these pathogens.

Viral pandemics are one of the greatest risks to humanity. Despite taking giant leaps in technology and science, we are more vulnerable today than we were 100 years ago. From Ebola to COVID-19, pandemics have underscored the need for a systematic way of detecting and tracking outbreaks of many common and fatal infectious diseases. The necessary diagnostic tests either do not exist or are not available where the need is greatest — in the communities of lower-income countries, particularly those in West and Central Africa, which suffer continuously from a lack of diagnostic capacity. As a result, millions of infectious disease cases remain unidentified and uncontained, and outbreaks are only detected once so many people have become ill that the problem cannot be ignored — typically much too late to stop an epidemic.

To address this gap, our team is building and deploying Sentinel: a pandemic preemption system that detects viral threats in real-time and by way of checkups in rural clinics, allowing us to stop infectious diseases before they spread. This initiative has the potential to transform the world’s ability to detect viruses that cause outbreaks, radically improve the speed at which authorities can respond, and significantly expand the geographic area covered by outbreak surveillance. This concept was first articulated through and largely funded by the Audacious Project, a collaborative approach to funding big ideas with the potential to create change at thrilling scale. Sentinel is a global collaboration of clinicians, epidemiologists, geneticists, virologists, bioengineers, computer scientists, and public health operations experts led in a joint effort led by the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID) and the Broad Institute, supported by key partners, such as Fathom, Dimagi, and MASS Design.

We are seeking a motivated clinician with a deep passion for public health to join the team at our Sentinel Diagnostics and Research Center at General Hospital Ikorodu, Lagos. The research clinician must possess outstanding clinical, communication, and organizational skills and an ability to fit seamlessly into a close-knit team. The clinician will be the primary contact with study participants (or patients) who present to the hospital or nearby primary health centers with acute fevers. Ideal candidates will be knowledgeable in human subject research and have experience using proper infection prevention and control procedures, as this project deals with communicable diseases.

Main duties / key responsibilities:

The research clinicians will be responsible for:

• Recruitment and screening of prospective study participants (patients)
• Obtaining patients’ consent to enroll in the study
• Conducting physical examinations
• Counseling patients before and after receipt of test results
• Documenting patient demographic and clinical information in paper and electronic case report form
• Referring patients for appropriate treatment
• Contacting participants for follow-up visits, if necessary
• Exercising proper infection control and quality control measures
• Generating periodic progress reports, as required
• Performing other duties as required for the effective progression of the project

These duties will be performed in accordance with the research study protocol and approved procedures. There will also be opportunities for onsite and offsite training programs in Good Clinical Practices, Quality Control/Assurance, and Infection Control Protocol