The South African National Clinical Trials Register (SANCTR) provides the public with updated information on clinical trials on human participants being conducted in South Africa. The Register provides you with information on a trials purpose; who can participate, where the trial is located, and contact details.

SANCTR forms part of international calls for making trial information publicly available. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which includes peer reviewed journals from around the world, made a statement that from 1 July 2005 no trials will be considered for publication unless they are included on a research register. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has begun the push for clinical trial registration with the initiation of a Clinical Trials Register platform. SANCTR registration fulfills the requirements of the ICMJE publication mandates and feeds information to the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) with formal partnership with the WHO recognised primary register Pan African Clinical Trial Registry (PACTR). Similarly, the global pharmaceutical industry has recently released plans to make trial data more publicly available.

Additionally, SANCTR is an important tool for monitoring and managing new clinical trials. The questions being investigated, findings of studies as well as mapping of locations, funders, funding, research institutions and progress towards developing new capacity in the area are some of the issues that the register can assist the research community in addressing.

The South African National Clinical Trials Register (SANCTR) provides the public with updated information on clinical trials on human participants being conducted in South Africa. In November 2005 the Department of Health issued a notice that as from the 1st December 2005 all new clinical trials to be conducted in the country must be registered in the South African National Clinical Trials Register. The notice also explained that trials that started recruiting as of 1st July 2005 must also be registered.