Health Economics and HIV and AIDS Research Division

The Health Economics and HIV and AIDS Research Division (HEARD) has been at the coalface of the national and international struggle against HIV/AIDS for almost 20 years. The applied social science centre works in an interface between policy and research around the issue of health in Africa, conducting a wide range of investigations into the macro-economic implications of HIV and AIDS including health systems challenges, the cost of treatment and care. It also does research into malaria and Tuberculosis.

Africa Centre for Crop Improvement

The Centre trains African plant breeders in eastern and southern Africa to breed better crops using conventional and molecular breeding tools. It is involved in a wide range of multidisciplinary research projects that include forestry, engineering, genetics, microbiology, entomology, engineering, economics, biochemistry, horticultural science, crop science, botany, chemistry and animal science.

Africa Health Research Institute

The Africa Health Research Institute is committed to working towards the elimination of HIV and TB. It combines the renowned Africa Centre for Population Health’s detailed population data from over 100 000 participants, with the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for TB-HIV (K-RITH)’s basic science, experimental medicine and world-class laboratory facilities.

DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in HIV Prevention

The DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in HIV Prevention is co-hosted by CAPRISA and UKZN. The main goal of the Centre is to undertake research aimed at understanding and ameliorating the high risk of HIV in women, especially young women, in South Africa and also to generate knowledge that contributes to the development of new HIV prevention technologies such as microbicides and vaccines. The Centre’s research activities cover a range of disciplines, including public health/epidemiology, basic laboratory science, clinical studies and implementation science.

Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa

The main goal of CAPRISA is to undertake globally relevant and locally responsive research that contributes to understanding HIV pathogenesis, prevention and epidemiology as well as the links between Tuberculosis and AIDS care. CAPRISA was created in 2001 and formally established in 2002 under the NIH-funded Comprehensive International Programme of Research on AIDS (CIPRA) by five partner institutions: UKZN, University of Cape Town, University of Western Cape, National Institute for Communicable Diseases, and Columbia University in New York.