Mireille Porter
(MPH 2014)

March 13, 2017

Mireille completed her MPH at the UCT in the epidemiology/biostatistics stream. Her thesis was entitled: “Outcomes of Infants Starting Antiretroviral Therapy in Southern Africa, 2004–2012” and included an extensive literature review and a manuscript prepared for publication. The literature review confirmed that there was limited published data on the outcomes of infants starting ART in routine care in Southern Africa. Subsequently she conducted an analysis of prospectively collected routine cohort data contributed from sites to IeDEA-SA. The manuscript described the demographic, baseline disease and therapeutic characteristics of just under 5000 infants at initiation of treatment and describes outcomes relating to growth, disease progression, programmatic outcomes and mortality. The analysis further assessed those baseline factors associated with treatment failure (virological) and mortality. The study described severe baseline disease severity, suboptimal responses to ART and high loss-to-follow up in infants starting ART in Southern Africa between 2004-2012. Severe baseline disease characteristics and initiation of ART before 2010 were associated with an increased probability of death. The manuscript was published in JAIDS (Porter, Davies et al. 2015). Mireille is currently acting as a Clinical and Research Consultant in a project to produce a Health Promotion Tool for Primary Health Care for the National Department of Health South Africa.