The overarching aims of IeDEA-SA are to conduct clinical, epidemiological and health services research in order to provide answers to the questions that clinicians, programs and ministries of health consider fundamental to HIV care and treatment strategies in Southern Africa; to inform HIV/AIDS, TB, cancer and mental health service delivery in the region, to increase the capacity for delivering antiretroviral therapy (ART), and, ultimately, to improve the prognosis of people living with HIV and AIDS in Southern Africa.
As the region with the greatest number of HIV+ adults and children and a sizable co-morbidity burden, the scientific agenda responds to the operational and clinical research priorities identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) and opinion leaders in the field and focuses on questions that cannot be answered by one cohort. IeDEA-SA’s potential is widely recognized by information consumers, including WHO and UNAIDS, and the HIV Modelling and MESH consortia. IeDEA-SA is also leading in innovations, from novel approaches to statistical modelling to linkages with other records including national death and cancer registries.
The specific aims of IeDEA-SA are:
1. To study outcomes along the continuum of HIV care in adults
2. To study outcomes in pregnant women, infants, children, and adolescents
3. To study non-communicable diseases (NCDs), hepatitis B and sexually transmitted infections (STIs)
4. To study the clinical and public health epidemiology of TB
5. To study cancer prevention, burden and care
6. To study mental health and substance use disorders
Associate Professor Emma Kalk is a clinical epidemiologist and Director of the Centre for Integrated Data and Epidemiological Research (CIDER), School of Public Health, University of Cape Town. Her focus is on operational research in maternal and child health. Her current interests include pharmacovigilance and surveillance in pregnant and breast-feeding women with an emphasis on antiretroviral and anti-tuberculosis therapy. She manages the Pregnancy Exposure Registry in Cape Town (a sentinel-site of the South African Pregnancy Exposure Registry) which is supported by a larger population-level database. Dr Kalk is a founding member and current Director of the sub-Saharan African Congenital Anomalies Network (sSCAN).
Nanina is an epidemiologist and mathematician whose work focuses on HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. She completed her PhD at ISPM within the IeDEA-SA collaboration, evaluating ART roll-out in sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on ART initiation, loss to follow-up, and mortality. After her PhD, she remained involved in IeDEA, supporting PhD students in Malawi and Zimbabwe, and also participated in the Swiss National COVID-19 Science Task Force’s data and modelling group. She then spent two years in South Africa at UCT on a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Postdoc.Mobility fellowship, focusing on improving mathematical modelling of HIV in key populations. Now back in Switzerland, based at ISPM and the University Hospital Zurich and supported by an SNSF Return.CH fellowship, she continues her work on HIV and is expanding her research to include other STIs.
Yann holds a MSc in Mathematical Engineering from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He has been working at ISPM since 2016, and on IeDEA projects since 2019. Currently his main tasks involve statistical support and data management for the cancer and mental health groups at IeDEA-SA.
Prof. Egger has a long-standing interest in the clinical epidemiology of HIV, including HIV-related cancers and other co-morbidities, with over 20 years of experience in HIV observational cohort research. He was instrumental in establishing the Antiretroviral Therapy Cohort Collaboration (ART-CC) in the 2000s, and later the ART in Lower Income Countries (ART-LINC), to estimate prognosis of HIV-1 infected, treatment-naïve patients initiating combination ART. He is also involved in the large COHERE collaboration (Collaboration of Observational HIV Epidemiological Research in Europe) and the Swiss Tuberculosis Network. Together with colleagues from the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Prof.Egger leads the mortality working group of the HIV Measurement, Surveillance & Evaluation Methods (MeSH).
Prof. Egger has served as co-Principal Investigator of IeDEA-SA since its inception in 2006. Under his leadership, IeDEA-SA project staff have served a key role in initiating and developing a joint collaboration between IeDEA global consortium and the WHO and UNAIDS. He has been Director of the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM) since 2002 and from January 2017, he will become the elected president of the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).
Shani has recently completed her PhD in Population Health as part of a cotutelle programme between the University of Cape Town and the University of Bristol. Her PhD thesis investigated infection-related hospitalisations and healthcare utilisation, by HIV-exposure status and maternal engagement in antiretroviral therapy, among children in the Western Cape, South Africa. During her PhD, she gained invaluable experience working with routine healthcare data from the Western Cape Provincial Health Data Centre. Shani is currently working as a UCT project manager for IeDEA-SA and a data analyst for CIDER.
France has an MA in Social Sciences and completed a joint CAS in DEI at the FHNW, ZHAW and the University of Basel in 2024. Her background is in Public Health and she has been working for several years as a Scientific Collaborator at the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), mostly on projects related mental health and health access equity. As of 2025 she is the Program Management Assistant for IeDEA-SA at ISPM.
Confidence is a qualified software developer and has completed a PostGrad Degree in Healthcare Technology Management. He is passionate about data and maintaining the quality. He also holds a N.Dip Information Technology (Software Development) in C++ and has a strong background of PHP Application Development, and certificates in Project Management in Global Health, and Leadership and Management in Health both obtained at the University of Washington. His passion is to technically improve the health care system throughout Africa and worldwide.
Nathalie is an epidemiologist and environmental health professional. Her research interests are mainly focused on infectious diseases, epidemiology, and implementation research. She has expertise in viral hepatitis, tuberculosis, SARS-CoV-2, and evidence synthesis. Nathalie joined ISPM in 2022 after completing her PhD in Epidemiology at the Medical School Hannover (MHH) in collaboration with the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI), Germany. She currently supports research teams working on Cancer, HIV, Hepatitis, and Tuberculosis.
Haroon is a medical doctor and actuarial graduate. His areas of interest include mathematical modelling and outcomes related to antiretroviral treatment interruptions. He is currently a Fogarty clinical PhD fellow investigating the role of ART interruptions in the TB epidemic.
I am enthusiastic about solving challenges involved with data pipelines from different systems with a keen focus on routine data maintenance for various public health systems. My previous experience has been from Agincourt MRC/Wits Health Transition Research Unit, National Income Dynamics Study and the Centre for Actuarial Research. My background is in Demography and Statistics.
Kati is a gynecologist by training and has completed her Fellowship with the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She has learned greatly from diverse clinical experiences in New Zealand, USA, Italy, Switzerland, Ethiopia, and Iran. Cervical cancer screening has been a research interest of hers for some time. The burden of cervical cancer disproportionately affects women living in low-income countries and the high prevalence of HIV in many of these setting contributes to the problem. In August 2021, she completed her PhD with the ISPM IeDEA-SA team on cervical cancer screening in HIV positive women. She now looks forward to continuing some cancer related projects as well as exploring the relationship between sexually transmitted diseases and HIV.
Wendy has a BCom and an Honours degree in Social Policy and Management. She has been working in the finance and operational side of Clinical Research for the last 6 years and is passionate about Southern Africa and finding solutions to problems.
Reshma has a background in statistics, and computational and applied mathematics. Although having worked in a diversity of application areas, she is passionate about their contribution to public health and epidemiology, and spent a number of years developing methodologies and tools related to HIV incidence estimation. Reshma has joined IeDEA-SA as a biostatistician and mathematical modeller.
Kim Anderson is a clinical epidemiologist at the UCT data centre. She has a clinical background in paediatic and adolescent HIV medicine. Her research areas of interest include health outcomes in perinatally-HIV-infected children and adolescents, morbidity in HIV-exposed uninfected children and prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
I am a clinician with an interest in HIV research. I have a Master’s degree in Tropical Medicine and International Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. I have taken a leadership role as part of my research on two large multinational, multicentre cohort studies: one to evaluate targeted empirical TB treatment based on novel algorithms for early TB diagnosis in HIV-positive adults with advanced HIV disease and, another to explore the feasibility of implementing a “Universal Test and Treat” programme within a correctional services setting. My current role is to contribute to research on the impact of substance abuse amongst HIV positive adolescents and young adults and explore measures that might help mitigate those effects. I am passionate about enabling HIV prevention in marginalised communities in the African context and making it a reality.
Veronika is a senior statistician with a PhD in biostatistics from the University of Washington. Her work focuses on applying advanced statistical methods to HIV epidemiology and global health. She has been with ISPM since 2016 and joined the IeDEA-SA team in 2019, contributing to a range of studies—from Dolutegravir resistance to authorship inequalities and mental health. Veronika also supports mentoring and capacity building in statistical methods.
Reneé de Waal is an epidemiologist at the UCT data centre. She has a background in clinical pharmacology and experience in HIV care. Her research interests include implementation, safety, and effectiveness of antiretroviral drugs, in children and adults.
Per Maximilian von Groote is the acting Program Manager of the International Epidemiological Database to Evaluate Aids, Southern Africa (IeDEA SA) research consortium and is based at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM), University of Bern. Per von Groote worked on numerous projects including research into social inequalities in functioning and disability, rehabilitation systems and services, and international public health policy, and is an executive editor of the WHO Report International Perspectives on Spinal Cord Injury. In these roles he developed an expertise in implementation research, specifically looking at the implementation of WHO global public health recommendations into national contexts. Among other participatory, stakeholder-driven and evidence-based implementation strategy development, application, monitoring and evaluation methods he conducted stakeholder dialogues in many countries including Germany, Romania, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia. He holds a Magister Artium in Political Sciences and History, a Master of European Politics and Government and a PhD in Health Science and Health Policy with a focus on implementation research.
Marie Ballif holds a PhD and an MSc in Public Health and brings over 15 years of experience as a senior researcher in public and global health, with a particular focus on HIV and tuberculosis. Passionate about tackling disparities, she applies her transdisciplinary expertise in public health, epidemiology, and microbiology to advance equitable healthcare access.
Andrew was co-Principal Investigator of IeDEA-SA from its inception until 2011. During this time, he completed his PhD on the effectiveness of ART in Khayelitsha and in the Western Cape, following adults for up to five years on ART and examining temporal trends over seven years, during a time when ART services expanded dramatically in the province. Andrew currently holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor in the Division of Public Health Medicine, UCT, and as a Public Health specialist in the Health Impact Assessment Directorate of the Western Cape Department of Health.
Cam Ha is the Data manager for IeDEA-SA cohorts in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. She works in close collaboration with the Data Manager at UCT who is responsible for the data management of cohorts within South Africa. Previously, she worked as a software engineer, spending many years specializing in data warehouse reporting within the telecom industry. Since joining the team, Cam Ha has been instrumental in optimizing the performance of the IeDEA-SA data management environment (servers and tools) and at the same time has quickly learned the data management of HIV patients.
Lukas is an epidemiologist and public health expert. His research focuses on infectious disease epidemiology, with a particular emphasis on the epidemiology of tuberculosis and HIV at the intersection of clinical and molecular data. He also has a keen interest in tuberculosis and respiratory virus transmission. As a senior research scientist, he has led multiregional projects on tuberculosis and HIV in large international collaborations (ART-LINC, IeDEA, Swiss HIV Cohort Study, Collaboration of Observational HIV Epidemiological Research in Europe) and conducted molecular epidemiological studies in Switzerland and sub-Saharan Africa. During a two-year stay in Tanzania, he led a team of physicians and scientists at the Ifakara Health Institute, gaining extensive field experience as a scientific project leader and tuberculosis team leader. He later served as a chief cantonal public health officer in Switzerland, significantly contributing to the public health response during the COVID-19 pandemic, and applying epidemiological principles in practice. Now back at the University of Bern, he leads the tuberculosis projects within IeDEA Southern Africa, including a multi-cohort study spanning five tuberculosis cohorts in a region disproportionately affected by the tuberculosis and HIV epidemics. His experience enables him to bridge theory and practice, connecting academia with public health challenges.
After completing a Master’s degree in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, Andreas joined the ISPM in 2012, where he completed his PhD in Epidemiology. His PhD project evaluated the effectiveness of Malawi’s “Option B+”. Specifically, the project aims were to identify challenges to program success, and then to plan and carry-out appropriate interventions.
In 2011, the Malawian MoH developed a pragmatic public health approach to improve the low antiretroviral coverage among pregnant women in Malawi and implemented the “Option B+” protocol. Option B+ provides universal lifelong ART for all HIV-infected pregnant and breastfeeding women, regardless of CD4 cell count and/or WHO clinical stage. Following the national implementation of Option B+ the antiretroviral coverage among pregnant women in Malawi increased from 49% in 2011 to 85% in 2014 and numerous other countries have adopted the Option B+ policy.
In November 2016, Andreas was awarded the 2016 annual SSPH+ Award for the best published PhD article resulting from his PhD: “Retention in care during the first 3 years of antiretroviral therapy for women in Malawi’s option B+ programme: an observational cohort study”,
Leigh is an epidemiologist and actuary, with a particular interest in the modelling of HIV and other diseases. He leads the development of the Thembisa model, an integrated HIV, TB and demographic model for South Africa. He also leads the development of MicroCOSM, an agent-based model of the social determinants of HIV and other STIs in South Africa. He is a co-chair of the UNAIDS Reference Group on Estimates, Modelling and Projections, and is a member of the editorial boards of ‘Infectious Disease Modelling’ and ‘Journal of the International AIDS Society’.
Nicky is the Senior Data Scientist for the IeDEA-SA South Africa cohort, a role she has held since joining the collaboration in 2007. Prior to that, she worked as the Data Manager for the Khayelitsha cohort, following her return from the UK, where she spent several years as a Surveillance Officer with the Health Protection Agency. Nicky has a background in pediatric nursing and brings a passion for tackling complex data challenges. She is also a keen Stata enthusiast, always eager to explore new ways of working with data.
Dr Patience Nyakato is a public health researcher with a PhD in Public Health (Epidemiology and Biostatistics) from the University of Cape Town and a Master’s degree in Medical Statistics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her research focuses on the analysis of longitudinal data to evaluate long-term engagement in care among children, adolescents, and young adults living with HIV (CAYHIV). Currently, her research is focused on investigating the impact of care interruptions on long-term health outcomes and develops evidence-based recommendations to enhance medication adherence, clinic visit compliance, retention in care, and virologic suppression. Dr. Patience is also interested in exploring data science methodologies to address challenges in accessing HIV treatment and care, contributing to innovative strategies in public health research.
Gem is an epidemiologist with a PhD in Public Health. Her research interests include topics related to the public health approach to treating HIV in Southern Africa, including describing long-term trends in the characteristics and treatment outcomes among people with HIV receiving treatment. Her areas of research have included the implementation of differentiated service delivery models of care, CD4 and viral load monitoring strategies for antiretroviral therapy programmes and more recently, advanced HIV disease and treatment failure in the era of widespread access to antiretroviral therapy, with a particular focus on treatment options for paediatric and adolescent populations.
John joined the ISPM in November 2022 with the Cancer Research Group and with the University of Bern where he is doing his PhD. He is working on mathematical models evaluating various Cervical Cancer screening strategies, as well as their (cost-) effectiveness in Zambia. He obtained his MSc. Statistics from the University of Ghana.
Tiana joined the ISPM in 2022 to pursue a PhD, aiming to implement and evaluate a novel targeted sequencing assay at two HIV clinics in Southern Africa for the rapid detection and characterisation of drug resistant tuberculosis. She has a BSc in Biochemistry and Genetics from the University of Cape Town and an MSc in Chemical Biology from the University of Genève.
Large private managed-care HIV programme for employed people in Southern Africa which has over 280,000 adult and pediatric patients. Patients are treated by private medical practitioners. AfA contracts directly with companies or medical insurance companies to administer HIV care.
CIDRZ is the largest non-profit healthcare research organization in Zambia and has an extensive technical and support infrastructure to facilitate ongoing healthcare, research, and training activities. CIDRZ contributes data to IeDEA-SA from 77 clinics to which it provides support.
The Hannan Crusaid Treatment Centre at the Gugulethu Community Health Centre is a large ART service in Gugulethu, with more than 17,000 children, adolescents, and adults currently accessing care. Gugulethu is an urban suburb of Cape Town in the Western Cape of South Africa and was one of the first public sector ART programs in South Africa, providing care since 2002.
Dr. Chimbetete obtained his MBCHB degree in 1998, a Masters in Public Health from University of Zimbabwe in 2011, and a PhD in Global Health from the University of Geneva in 2020. He has over 25 years’ experience working in Public, Private and NGO health sectors in Zimbabwe. He is a passionate trainer who has trained thousands of healthcare workers in the comprehensive management of HIV infection. He has co-authored over 50 publications in peer reviewed journals. He is the Research and Training Director at Newlands Clinic in Harare and also a faculty member of the University of Zimbabwe department of global and public health.
Eliane is a medical doctor with an MSc in Epidemiology (2015) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and an MSc in Statistics (2018) from the University of Neuchâtel. Her research focus is HIV-related cancer and oncogenic viruses with a special interest in cervical cancer prevention among women living with HIV. In 2018, she was awarded a 2-year fellowship from the Swiss Cancer Research foundation to study novel cervical cancer screening methods at the University of North Carolina. She spent the first part of her fellowship at the campus in Chapel Hill, USA, and the second part at a cervical cancer screening program in Johannesburg, South Africa. In 2020, she returned to the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM) at the University of Bern where she took over the lead of the IeDEA-SA cancer research group.
Gilles is an attending physician at the Department of Infectious Diseases, University Hospital Bern and a senior research fellow at the institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Bern. He leads several HIV and viral hepatitis cohort projects in Switzerland and sub-Saharan Africa, and currently serves as a co-PI of IeDEA-SA and as Chairman of the Scientific Board of the Swiss HIV Cohort Study.
Prof. Davies has been the co-Principal Investigator of IeDEA-SA since 2011, and serves as the Director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Research (CIDER). She is a member of the IeDEA Executive Committee and participates in the global IeDEA Pediatric Working Group (previous chair 2009-2011).
CIDER has extensive experience in HIV observational cohort research, ranging from the first public sector ART program in the region demonstrating the feasibility and effectiveness of ART to ongoing provincial, regional and international cohort collaborations. Dr. Davies played a key role in analyses of the Red Cross Children’s Hospital ART program, one of the first dedicated pediatric ART programs in Africa. CIDER investigators have led analyses on program outcomes and the effectiveness of the South African National ART Program for children and adults as well as across the Southern African region, and comparisons with other regions. Prof. Davies also leads the international Collaborative Initiative for Pediatric HIV Education and Research (CIPHER) Cohort Collaboration in partnership with the Harvard School of Public Health and University College London. She is frequently invited as technical expert to the WHO and National Guidelines Development groups.
Staff at the UCT Data Center are actively involved in running the MPH course of the School of Public Health and Family Medicine and lead the module on the epidemiology of infectious diseases. In addition, they supervise the MPH and PhD students as well as undergraduate MBChB students undertaking their public health module. A number of UCT postgraduate students have transitioned to working in the health services of the Western Cape Department of Health and to research in resource-limited settings. This, together with our support for site investigators undertaking their own analyses, confirms their commitment to building local capacity for research.
The ISPM coordinates the PhD program of the Swiss School of Public Health SSPH+ and runs the Winter School for advanced epidemiological methods . Staff at ISPM are also involved in teaching the Master in Public Health (MPH) including courses on meta-analyses, evidence-based Public Health and writing journal articles. ISPM also share expertise through tutoring for grant writing, training to use REDCap a web-based electronic data capture tool hosted at the ISPM and conducting specialist courses on probabilistic data linkages and statistical analyses. Recent PhD graduates continue to work in HIV research.
