VEC’s Phd/MD student, Gareth Mercer, and clinical trial unit manager, Arlene Kallos, have landed in Cape Town, South Africa this week to visit the research centre at Tygerberg Hospital. They will be assisting the Cape Town team in finalizing the database entries (first set of study analyses) of the Mother Infant Health Study (MIHS).

The MIHS is following the health of a group of HIV-uninfected children born to HIV-infected mothers and a comparison group of children born to HIV-uninfected mothers in Cape Town, South Africa. The primary goal is to determine whether, during infancy, HIV-exposed, uninfected children are more likely to be hospitalized for infection than HIV-unexposed children. The MIHS is a collaboration between researchers at CFRI (lead by Dr. David Speert) and at Tygerberg Hospital and Stellenbosch University in Cape Town (led by Drs. Monika Esser and Mark Cotton). It is primarily funded by a Major Thematic Grant from The Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies.