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Cape Town, South Africa

The South African site is based at the Centre for Medical Ethics and Law at Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town. The team includes Prof Keymanthri Moodley, Dr Malcolm de Roubaix, Dr Ciara Staunton, Ms Melany Hendricks and Dr Theresa Rossouw (University of Pretoria). The activities of the team started in December 2013 with researching and writing papers focusing on African philosophy and HIV Cure research, pluralistic perspectives on HIV cure and informed consent for HIV cure trials in South Africa.

In March 2014, 15 in-depth interviews were conducted as part of formative research with stakeholders. These were the first interviews conducted in South Africa to investigate stakeholder perceptions of HIV cure research. Interesting insights into the attitudes towards cure research emerged. Importantly this piece of empirical work revealed a lack of awareness and understanding of cure research. To address this concern, an educational tool was planned and is under development. Given the misperceptions about cure created historically as a result of illegitimate “cures” throughout Africa, it is hoped that this video will stimulate conversations about cure in communities and clarify scientific cure strategies. It is anticipated that the video will be made available to all HIV clinics in the Western Cape and later, to other clinics in South Africa and other African countries. This educational tool will also be assessed in a before and after study to ascertain its effect on comprehension about cure. Currently our key informant interviews are nearing completion and we expect to conduct our stakeholder interviews in May/June 2015.

Cape Town site-based research team

Cape Town blog posts

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