Elizabeth is the project manager for the IeDEA-WHO Collaboration since November 2014. This project formalizes collaboration between the IeDEA network and the WHO by defining a core set of indicators and analyses that can contribute in a reliable and predicable way to global ART reporting. Before joining ISPM, she worked at UNAIDS coordinating data collection/dissemination of HIV/AIDS estimates and was responsible for producing summary analyses of the HIV/AIDS epidemic to inform policy and strategy within the organization. She has previously held positions at WHO, UNAIDS and NGOs and has a background in Biology, Environmental Science and Epidemiology. Her current research focus is HIV retention in care.

Gilles is an attending physician at the Department of Infectious Diseases, University Hospital Bern and a senior research fellow. He currently leads several HIV and viral hepatitis cohort projects within the framework of IeDEA-SA and IeDEA-West Africa as well as in the Swiss HIV Cohort Study. He has recently been granted a three-year Ambizione-Prosper fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation to study HIV and Hepatitis B coinfection in sub-Saharan Africa.

Priscilla Tsondai recently completed her Master’s in Public Health (Epidemiology) degree at the University of Cape Town. Her thesis was titled: “HIV viral load monitoring in HIV-infected pregnant women established on antiretroviral therapy in Cape Town, South Africa”. The literature review discussed the role of HIV viral load and antiretroviral therapy (ART) on vertical transmission of HIV and compared the existing ART monitoring strategies and management of viremia in resource-limited settings. She described public sector HIV viral load testing patterns (frequency and timing) and HIV viral load levels for pregnant women conceiving on ART, before and during pregnancy. In addition, the analysis assessed factors associated with having a HIV viral load (VL) test performed and being viremic during pregnancy. Defining viremia as a VL >1000 copies/mL, the analysis concluded that 80% of women had VL tests done during pregnancy, and of these approximately 88% had VL <1000 copies/mL For women with a raised VL during pregnancy, under 60% had repeat VL tests performed before delivery; and of those that did, over half were still viremic on the second test.

Priscilla is currently working as a Research Officer and has just begun her PhD at the University of Cape Town. Her PhD will focus on the models of care and the models of transition to adult HIV services for HIV-infected adolescents within Southern Africa.

Lilian holds a Federal Diploma of Commerce and has many years’ international experience in a wide range of administrative tasks. She has been with the University / University Hospital of Bern for more than ten years supporting a Medical Research Group with Grant Management, HR, the sourcing of consumables and all other non-scientific tasks. In addition, she supported two EU-funded research networks as Grant Holder Manager.

Lilian has joined the IeDEA SA team in June 2017.

Gem is an epidemiologist at the UCT Data Center, currently focusing on research related to pediatric HIV. She has a Masters in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, an interest in infectious diseases, and has worked as a field epidemiologist primarily doing operational research to address specific challenges in the delivery of primary care to those with HIV.

Patience has recently completed her masters in Medical Statistics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She worked on two theses for her masters, one of which has been submitted for publication and is currently under review. The first thesis was titled “Development of a predictive model for loss to follow up and incidence of pregnancy among HIV negative female sex workers among to African cohorts”. This was part of a study taking place in Mwanza and Uganda to establish the feasibility of these women for HIV prevention trials on microbicide and vaccines (PMC3715536). The second thesis was titled “Correction of estimates of retention in care for a Uganda pre-ART cohort: a sample-based approach”. This was a retrospective cohort study that involved tracing of lost patients to establish their outcomes (dead, alive and in/out of care, lost) and merge these with clinic-recorded outcomes. Patience is currently working as a research officer/ statistician with IeDEA-SA.
She is currently working on an analysis of virologic suppression rates in children starting efavirenz-based ART regimens stratified by PMTCT. Patience is also developing a concept on viral load trajectories in adolescents
and young adults.

Nicky is the data manager for the IeDEA-SA South Africa cohort and she has been with the collaboration since 2007. Prior to that she worked as the data manager for the Khayelitsha cohort after returning from the UK where she worked for the Health Protection Agency as a Surveillance Officer for a number of years. She has a nursing background in pediatrics.

Victoria completed her MPH (Epidemiology) degree in 2016 at the University of Cape Town. Her thesis was titled “Prevalence and determinants of unplanned pregnancy in HIV-positive and HIV-negative pregnant women in Cape Town, South Africa: a cross-sectional study” She described the importance of preventing unplanned pregnancies among HIV-positive women as one of the crucial tools for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) in high burden, resource-limited settings such as South Africa. The study presented key differences between HIV-positive and HIV-negative women regarding pregnancy intentions and family planning practices. Younger age (<24 years old), increasing parity and contraceptive use in the year prior to conception were associated with an increased probability of an unplanned pregnancy. The manuscript was published in BMJ Open (Iyun et al. 2018).

Victoria is currently working on her PhD project at the University of Cape Town. Her PhD is focused on understanding the effect of expanded early infant diagnosis (EID) and early infant antiretroviral therapy (EIART) guidelines and practices, on patient and program-level outcomes among HIV-infected infants and young children in resource-limited settings.

Mmamapudi completed her MPH in 2016, her thesis sought to understand the epidemiology of
diabetes in a high tuberculosis and HIV context Khayelitsha, South Africa. She was also involved in a
study that determined the association between TB and diabetes. (odds ratio 2.4; 95% confidence
interval 1.3–4.3) in a study population with high HIV prevalence (64%) (1). Building on her MPH work, she is currently working on her PhD project that seeks to understand the effect of diabetes, HIV and household overcrowded living conditions on the South African TB epidemic. She will develop an individual-based model to represent TB dynamics in South Africa. The model will be used to: a) understand and explain the observed gender and age differences in TB; b) assess how effective current TB control interventions have been in reducing TB incidence in South Africa up to the current time c) determine the population attributable burden of tuberculosis due to HIV, diabetes, and household overcrowded living conditions; and d) evaluate the potential impact of current TB control interventions that target to reduce HIV, diabetes and household overcrowding in
addition to current TB control interventions.

Leigh is an epidemiologist and actuary, with a particular interest in the modelling of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. He has been involved in evaluating the impact of a range of HIV prevention and treatment programmes in South Africa. His work includes estimating the demographic impact of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. He has recently published updated HIV and demographic estimates for South Africa and for each of the provinces.

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”,

Lukas is an epidemiologist and international health expert. His research focus is infectious disease epidemiology and molecular epidemiology of emerging pathogens threatening public health, such as nosocomial infections and more recently TB and HIV, at the interface between clinical and molecular data. As the head of the TB research group, he has been leading multiregional projects on TB and HIV within IeDEA, and molecular epidemiological studies on TB/HIV in Switzerland and sub-Saharan Africa. He has a longstanding track record working with large HIV collaborations (IeDEA, Swiss HIV Cohort Study, Collaboration of Observational HIV Epidemiological Research in Europe). During the last two years, Lukas has gained extensive field experience in low-income settings as scientific project leader and TB team leader stationed at the Ifakara Health Institute in

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.

Morna has worked in the field of HIV/AIDS in South Africa since 1992, when she helped to establish the AIDS Consortium. From 2002-2011, she managed CIPRA-SA, a NIH-funded multi-centre study including CHER (early ART for infants). Since 2007 she has been project manager of the IeDEA-SA data centre at UCT, completing her MPH (Epidemiology) in the same year. In 2014 she was awarded her PhD on the evolution and effectiveness of the South African ART programme. Morna has a particular interest in the invisibility of men and older individuals in African ART programmes. She is passionate about growing African research capacity.

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.

Julia is a physician specializing in the field of clinical hematology/oncology, public health, and epidemiology. She started her career at the University of Cologne, Germany, at the Department for Hematology/Oncology and Infectious Diseases where her research focused on meta-analyses of the effectiveness of cancer treatment as well as prognostic factors for cancer survival. Since 2007, Julia has been working at the ISPM where her research focus is analyses of AIDS-defining and non AIDS-defining cancer in HIV-positive patients in Europe, North America, Latin America, Southern Africa and Asia-Pacific. She uses meta-analytical techniques to evaluate risks for infection with oncogenic viruses and effectiveness of oncologic treatments. Currently, Julia supports probabilistic record linkage projects with HIV cohorts and cancer registries in South Africa and Malawi.

Marie participates in multiregional IeDEA studies in the field of TB and HIV. She has a background in biology and molecular epidemiology and joined ISPM after finishing her PhD at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in 2011, having previously worked as a Research Assistant at the University Hospital of Zurich. Her main research interests are TB, drug resistance and molecular epidemiology. In addition, Marie coordinates tracing studies aiming to understand and improve retention in care among HIV-infected individuals in Southern Africa.

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. Before joining ISPM he worked as research scientist in the Disability Policy Unit at the Department of Health Science and Health Policy at the Swiss Paraplegic Research (SPF), Nottwil and the University of Lucerne, Lucerne. 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.

Benedikt contributes to the tracing studies aiming to understand and improve retention in care among HIV-infected individuals with data from different IeDEA-SA sites. His interest is to receive both, quantitative and qualitative insights by using different approaches and methodologies.

 Benedikt has a background in epidemiology/parasitology in organic animal husbandry (MSc in Epidemiology, FibL/Swiss TPH/University of Basel). He holds a biology teacher diploma for high schools and is experienced in international development cooperation by working for an NGO in Tanzania (different health topics). He is particularly interested in the interface between research and development cooperation, what he deepened by recent works (Medicus Mundi Switzerland: Implementation Research of Swiss NGOs Working in the Field of International Health Cooperation; Unité: The Multilevel Approach in the Swiss Exchange of Personnel in Development Cooperation).

Lina is a statistician in an IeDEA group and is working for a SAM study. She has a background in psychology and statistics and several years of experience in data management, probabilistic data linkages and statistical analysis. Currently she is conducting privacy preserving probabilistic record linkages to create a database for analysis of AIDS-defining and non AIDS-defining cancer in HIV-positive patients in South Africa.

Renee de Waal is a clinical epidemiologist at the UCT data centre. Her research focuses on antiretroviral drug safety, and her recent analyses describe the incidence of, and risk factors for, various antiretroviral side effects and treatment-limiting toxicities.

Kathleen is currently in her second year of the MPH (Epidemiology and Biostatistics) at the University of Cape Town. She is currently working on her dissertation, titled: Long-term Virologic Responses to Antiretroviral Therapy Among Patients Entering Adherence Clubs in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. She is hoping to complete her MPH degree at the end of the year. Kathleen has just started working as a research assistant for IeDEA-SA at the University of Cape Town.

Veronika is a statistician, working at ISPM since 2016. She finished her PhD in Biostatistics at the University of Washington and has various research interests including survival analysis, causal inference and personalized medicine. She is involved in the statistical analyses for IeDEA.

Julien’s research focuses on modelling the dynamics of HIV transmission and of the emergence of drug-resistant strains. He trained in Paris and obtained an MD in public health and social medicine and a PhD in biostatistics and epidemiology. He arrived at Bern University in August, 2018

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.

Stefanie contributes to the friendship bench randomized controlled trial. Aim of the trial is to evaluate the effects of a psychological intervention on antiretroviral therapy outcomes and symptoms of common mental disorders in HIV-positive adults in rural Zimbabwe. 

She has a background in human biology (MSc/University of Zürich). She also works as a project manager at the Clinical Trials Unit Bern at University of Bern. Her main interest is the practical conduct of clinical trials in various fields (i.e. Ebola ça suffit! – Phase III Vaccine Trial in Guinea).

Kim Anderson is a clinical epidemiologist at the UCT data centre. She has a background in clinical paediatric HIV care. She recently completed a MPH (Epidemiology) at UCT. Her thesis was titled “Treatment outcomes in perinatally-infected HIV positive adolescents and young adults after 10+ years on antiretroviral therapy.” Her current research focuses on pregnancy outcomes in perinatally-HIV-infected adolescents and women, as well as health outcomes in HIV-exposed uninfected children.

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.

Martina L. Reichmuth’s research focuses on molecular epidemiology of HIV and other infectious diseases. She has a Masters degree in Biomedicine (MSc/University of Zurich). She has worked on HIV related topics and focused on molecular epidemiology e.g. phylogeny and resistance. She arrived at the University of Bern in September 2019.

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.