HIV/AIDS and Global Health group
The overall positive development of world health has reversed in several countries over the last decades largely due to the HIV epidemic that sustain or increase poverty, gender and socio-economic inequalities. While HIV prevalence has seemingly reached a steady-state in several of the high-burden countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is at strikingly high levels. Likewise prevalence rates are increasing sharply in vulnerable groups in countries with concentrated HIV epidemics in South-East Asia. There is an urgent need of targeted prevention that is fit to context and take into account the interplay between local variations in risk behavior and HIV prevalence.
The ambition to radically increase access to anti-retroviral treatment for HIV positive individuals has resulted in an unprecedented in-flow of development aid to vertical HIV/AIDS programmes, especially in Sub-Saharan African countries. Little is known of the potential obstacles or opportunities the scale-up of antiretroviral treatment implies to weak health systems, how it influences the capacity to recruit and retain patients in care and the consequences on HIV related morbidity, mortality and resistance.
Our aim is to provide highly relevant, high quality research that will contribute to the development of evidence-based strategies for sustainable HIV prevention and care in low-and middle income contexts. Health systems research poses specific methodological challenges in contexts where the annual public health spending falls below 10 dollars per person and most drugs and services are provided informally. We combine quantitative and qualitative research methods fit to the research question and perform most of our studies in low- and middle-income countries in Africa and Asia. We are also involved in quantitative method development using innovative approaches and interdisciplinary competence. We lead courses and regularly teach in basic and advanced training in HIV, TB, epidemiology and global health.
