Elimination of HIV infection as a cause of human illness and death, and achieving zero HIV transmission have been embraced by the AIDS research and treatment communities as achievable. As HIV care and treatment programs are implemented throughout Africa, critical advances in research and policy are needed, so that care and treatment resources can be deployed to optimal benefit: decreasing both new HIV transmissions and HIV-related morbidity and mortality. Among the most important challenges to maximizing the public health benefits of HIV care and treatment programs are late diagnosis of HIV-infection, low rates of linkage to care, and high rates of late ART initiation which in turn ar associated with high rates of mortality, more costly clinical management and continued HIV transmission. In addition there remain unanswered clinical questions for persons living with HIV (PLWH) even with optimal ART. For PLWH in SubSaharan Africa (SSA), ART has been highly effective in decreasing HIV-related morbidity (and mortality), but the association of HIV with metabolic diseases and other conditions of aging (e.g. cancers), and the impact of under- or over-nutrition are not well defined. Newly funded as CA-IeDEA four years ago, we have built a new Central Africa IeDEA (CA- IeDEA), and have 1.) Compiled and managed secondary source patient-level data on ~52,000 patients through both extraction from existing electronic data and new on-the-ground systems for efficient capture of clinical data in low-resource clinical settings; 2.) Been highly productive scientifically with >20 publications even while data collection was in development, and 3.) have continued to foster African leadership and build local research capacity. We propose now to increase the database modestly (to ~80,000 patients) to increase the representativeness of HIV in the region geographically and in service delivery strategies and success and to expand our implementation science approaches to optimize short- and long-term HIV care outcomes both in Central Africa and globally, continue to investigate epidemiologic questions with clinical impact, with a focus on the comorbidities of aging and women's reproductive health.
Sub-Saharan Africa bears the greatest burden of HIV disease globally. Research to define the most effective service delivery strategies is key to decreasing HIV as a cause of illness and death. Such research is critical to guide policy makers and program implementers on service delivery mechanisms to provide most efficient use of treatment resources and the optimal gain to the public's health.
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