Collaboration with Desmond Tutu HIV Centre.

The Desmond Tutu HIV Centre (DTHC) is involved in providing ART to patients in the public sector, and performing related HIV research. They have various research sites, including Masiphumele in the western Cape where they are investigating the impact of ART treatment on the community tuberculosis rates and the patterns of TB transmission.

SACEMA has joined with the DTHC to model these patterns of transmission within the Masiphumele community.

For more information, see: http://www.iidmm.uct.ac.za/bekkerwood/index.htm

Collaboration with the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)

SACEMA has entered into an arrangement with IRD, particularly their research unit GEODES, regarding collaboration around epidemiological issues. GEODES is sponsoring several of their staff members to work with SACEMA in Stellenbosch for several months to assist on the Masiphumele project with the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre.

Nicolas Bacaer will be joining SACEMA in November 2006 to analyse the Masiphumele data from a differential equations perspective. Pierre du Beaudrap, a medical doctor, will be assisting with microsimulation of the data, as well as being involved on the medical side if necessary.

Micro-simulation with the Pasteur Institute

Dr Alan Matthews, based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, is currently involved in developing an HIV-AIDS micro-simulation model in collaboration with the Epidemiology of Emerging Diseases Unit of the Pasteur Institute, Paris. This work is partly funded by SACEMA, the International AIDS Society, and the France-South Africa International Cooperation Programme.

Dr Matthews has been involved with SACEMA since its founding conference in December 2003.

Male Circumcision and HIV

SACEMA was involved in a trial at Orange Farm, led by Professor Bertran Auvert, Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Versailles, on male circumcision and its affects on the transmission of HIV. The results of this trial were presented at a SACEMA/UNAIDS meeting in November 2005, and have received wide international attention.

These results have been utilised in two modelling studies supported by SACEMA. The first has been published recently and is an estimation of the potential impact of scaling up male circumcision in Africa on the number of new HIV infections, and deaths due to AIDS that could be averted in the next decades. The second is an ongoing study estimating the cost-effectiveness of an intervention based on male circumcision.

Further SACEMA-funded analyses have also flowed from this study. The first analysis describes the sexual behaviour change associated with male circumcision. Recently circumcised young men could feel protected by male circumcision and could change their sexual behaviour leading to a higher risk of HIV infection. This risk compensation analysis has now been submitted for publication. The second analysis aims to use the data set of the Orange Farm trial to assess the impact of male circumcision on the condom use, and is ongoing.