The Bias In Medical Research: Africa Carries A Huge Disease Burden But Is Missing From Clinical Trials
Researchers at the Institute of Medical Research and Medicinal Plant Studies in Yaounde, Cameroon. Daniel Beloumou Olomo / AFP via Getty Images BY BAMBA GAYE ADJUNCT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITE CHEIKH ANTA DIOP DE DAKAR Modern medicine prides itself on being a universal science, built on evidence from clinical trials. But there’s a bias in medical research. While Africa accounts for roughly 25% of the global disease burden and 19% of the global population , the continent’s people are largely invisible in some clinical trials. The scale of the erasure is revealed in a landmark study of 2,472 randomised controlled trials globally published between 2019 and 2024. I led this team of researchers, who scrutinised the world’s most influential medical publications to quantify African representation. They included the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Nature Medicine, and the British Medical Journal. There were also three leading cardiova...
