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UCT RESEARCH REPORT 2012
Driven by the large burden of childhood respiratory illnesses
in South Africa and Africa, Professor Heather Zar of UCT’s
Department of Paediatrics and Child Health has built a strong
clinical translational research programme focused on developing
strategies to improve child lunghealth. This has beenunderpinned
by the growth of a busy clinical research unit at the Red Cross War
Memorial Children’s Hospital and training of several master’s and
doctoral students. She is currently leading a new initiative that
will see an expanded paediatric clinical research unit completed
this year, with satellite sites in community settings, enabling
growth of clinical research and building much capacity in child
health in South Africa and Africa.
T
his research addresses the leading causes of childhood illness and death in
African children – tuberculosis, pneumonia, HIV-associated respiratory illness
and asthma. A strong focus has been on evolving new strategies for diagnosis,
prevention and treatment of pneumonia – the major killer of children under five
years of age – including those for HIV-infected children. A recently completed
project included a study of the impact of the new pneumoccocal conjugate vaccine
(introduced in 2009 in South Africa) on hospitalisation for childhood pneumonia
and on the cause of pneumonia. Tuberculosis, the major cause of death in South
Africa and a relatively neglected, important cause of childhood illness, has been
another focus, particularly the development of better ways to diagnose and prevent
childhood TB. This work has been supported by grants from the National Institutes
of Health (NIH) and the European Developing Country Clinical Trials Partnership.
Research in
Child Lung Health