Top honours for UKZN medical scientists
Durban scientists have received top honours for ground-breaking health research.
THE South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) has awarded two Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) faculty scientists gold medals for their seminal scientific contributions to the fields of HIV and tuberculosis (TB) research.
AHRI’s Frank Tanser and Thumbi Ndung’u, who both hold professorships at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, were presented the medals at the 2017 SAMRC Scientific Merit Awards gala dinner in Cape Town on 31 October. The Awards are among South Africa’s most prestigious. The gold medal is awarded annually to established senior scientists who have made key scientific contributions that have impacted on the health of people.
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Prof Ndung’u’s research is ultimately focussed on designing a vaccine or cure strategy for two of South Africa’s major killer diseases, HIV and TB. He works to understand how the immune system fights off these diseases, and how these pathogens in turn evade or adapt to continuous immune pressure. He has made seminal contributions to our understanding of how the immune system is able to partially control HIV, demonstrating how genetic factors and viral factors interact to determine the clinical outcome of a patient.
Ndung’u has also identified viral genetic factors that are linked to HIV transmission and how the disease progresses. Prof Ndung’u also has a special interest in capacity building for biomedical research in Africa, and heads up the Sub-Saharan African Network for TB/HIV Research Excellence, which strives to empower African scientists.
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Prof Tanser’s research aims to evaluate and design intervention strategies to drive back the HIV epidemic and its negative consequences in communities hardest hit by the epidemic. His pivotal work over the past 20 years has provided substantial insights into the evolving and dynamic nature of the HIV epidemic and its key drivers, informing HIV prevention and treatment efforts in sub-Saharan Africa.
His research into the population-level impacts of the antiretroviral therapy (ART) roll-out has led to wide-reaching and rapid changes to government policy on how ART programmes in South Africa are designed and implemented. In particular, a seminal study he published in one of the world’s leading scientific journals – Science – was the first to show that nurse-led and decentralised HIV programmes in rural areas could be successful in reducing HIV transmission at the population level.
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