Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM)

IeDEA-SA has started its 16th year

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18.11.2021 – Matthias Egger, his team and international partners have received another five years of funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH; United States). The nearly 16 million USD award ensures the continuation of the International epidemiology Databases to Evaluate AIDS Southern Africa (IeDEA-SA) collaboration through 2026.

Within the IeDEA consortium, the team at ISPM works closely together with colleagues from their partner institution at the University of Cape Town (South Africa) and with those from other IeDEA regions from across the globe. Their collaborative work entails consolidating, curating, and analyzing data about the care and treatment of people with HIV to evaluate outcomes related to HIV/AIDS and its comorbidities.

Steering Group IeDEA

In addition to the core epidemiological studies about HIV care and antiretroviral therapy (ART) services among adults, their research for the new grant cycle will also focus on:

  • outcomes among pregnant women, infants, children, and adolescents,
  • non-communicable diseases, hepatitis B, and sexually transmitted infections,
  • clinical and public health epidemiology of tuberculosis,
  • cancer prevention, burden, and care, and
  • mental health and substance use disorders.

Southern Africa is the world region with the greatest number of HIV-positive individuals and a high co-morbidity burden. It is home to some of the largest ART programmes worldwide and the IeDEA-SA databases include individual-level data on more than one million adults and children on ART. They are thus perfectly placed to address high priority research questions as identified by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNAIDS and other opinion leaders in the field.

Using cutting-edge approaches to statistical modelling and linkages with other health records (for example, large national death and cancer registries), IeDEA-SA continues to innovate and lead the way. Highlights over the next five years include the All Africa Meetings in 2023 and 2025. During these meetings, established and early-stage investigators from all African IeDEA regions will come together to present and discuss the latest research results and plans. These popular meetings showcase the underlying core strengths of the IeDEA consortia—the international, collaborative spirit with a specific focus on promoting early-stage investigators.