To mark the end of the five year international research consortium Evidence for Action on HIV Treatment and Care Systems, a report has been released summarising key messages from five years of research on HIV treatment and care systems. The report draws together some of the main findings from the research programme.
The Consortium
The Alliance has been one of the core partners in the five-year research consortium, launched in 2006. Others have included the Lighthouse Trust (Malawi), LSHTM (UK), Medical Research Council/Uganda Virus Research Institute, Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit/University College London (UK), National AIDS Research Institute (India) and ZAMBART (Zambia).
The Programme has been funded by the UK’s Department for International Development and has carried out over70 policy-relevant research projects on key health system issues related to HIV treatment and care. The Alliance component received substantial financial support from the Africa Regional Programme.
Key messages report launch
Professor Baron Peter Piot, Director of LSHTM opened the launch event. He outlined how the landscape of the AIDS response has changed dramatically in the five years since the beginning of the project. Specifically, the number of people worldwide receiving life saving anti-retroviral treatment (ART) for HIV has grown from around 2 million in 2006 to 6 million (based on latest data available at the end of 2009).
‘These research results provide much needed evidence for how best to deliver ARTs and will be of immense benefit to Ministries of Health, National AIDS Councils, NGOs as well as groups of people living with HIV since after all, this is about their lives.’
Piot was followed by short presentations from Professor David Ross, Programme Director for Evidence for Action and Dr. Deborah Watson-Jones, Senior Lecturer at LSHTM, sharing details of three sample EFA research projects on TB-HIV integration, mental health and HIV and missed opportunities in PMTCT. You can download copies of all of the research-policy briefings from the Evidence for Action website.
Learning for the Alliance
Dr Gitau Mburu, senior advisor on health systems and services and manager of the EFA programme at the Alliance, said: ‘Evidence for Action has contributed to developing and strengthening the research capacity of the Alliance both in the UK as well as in some of its southern partners in Zambia and Uganda. As a result of this partnership, the Alliance has developed institutional structures which contribute to advancing the research agenda of the global partnership.’
Specific research that the Alliance has been involved with includes:
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Listen to Peter Piot's presentation at the Launch event.
These results provide much needed evidence for how best to deliver ART. 