Ute Feucht from the Department of Paediatrics received her PhD at the University of Stellenbosch in December 2015.  The title of her dissertation was “Improving the care of HIV-infected and -affected children during the implementation phase of the large-scale antiretroviral therapy programme in South Africa”.  Her supervisors were Prof Mariana Kruger from the University of Stellenbosch and Prof Brian Forsyth, from Yale University, USA, who also is an extraordinary professor at the University of Pretoria.

The aim of the doctoral study was the evaluation of the mother-to-child HIV prevention programme and childhood HIV interventions after the large-scale implementation of these programmes in South Africa.  Findings include improvement over time in maternal and childhood HIV diagnosis and antiretroviral interventions, but weak preconception HIV services and tuberculosis screening.  Additionally the risk of false-positive HIV test results with declining HIV transmission rates was described.  Suboptimal primary care paediatric HIV testing resulted in late presentation of HIV-infected children for care.  Viral resistance patterns were additionally described, which indicated that protease-inhibitor antiretroviral therapy failure was related to therapy length and timing of tuberculosis treatment.  Growth in HIV-infected children was negatively influenced by tuberculosis co-infection, while poor growth was described in HIV-exposed children in whom the mothers had been on antiretroviral therapy during the pregnancy.