Leeds University Centre for Global Development

Communicable Diseases and Health Service Delivery (COMDIS-HSD)

Professor John Walley at the Nuffield Centre for International Health and Development is currently working on COMDIS-HSD – a project looking at communicable diseases and health services delivery.

Antiretroviral (ARV) drugs have been effective in reducing morbidity and mortality worldwide amongst HIV infected patients, but large numbers of patients are still experiencing treatment failure. Poor adherence to taking the tablets is the main cause of drug resistance and treatment failure.  

John Walley has been involved in research contributing evidence that behavioural interventions, such as mobile-phone text messaging, treatment supporters, enhanced education and counselling are effective interventions to improve adherence to ART in sub-Saharan African settings.  These interventions were developed and tested in partnership with the Uganda National AIDS Control Programme (NACP), and are now being scaled up by the NACP across the country.  A paper on the evaluation study of the package has recently been accepted by the prestigious "AIDS Care" journal. For more information visit COMDIS-HSD – Research Programme Consortium.

 

Community Responses to HIV/AIDS

HIV/AIDS is a major threat to human security worldwide. Whereas the global response to the epidemic in poor regions has intensified since 2000, the disease is not under control. Social, epidemiological, and global political economic factors shape the course of a disease, and thus of individual lives and households.

In this context, Dr Jelke Boesten at the School of Politics and International Studies (POLIS), examines community responses to HIV/AIDS in Tanzania. Her research is discussed in a very popular third year undergraduate module, Approaches to HIV/AIDS in the Developing World. The module explores why and how poor countries became so severely affected by the epidemic, and what contemporary social and political dynamics are challenging or perpetuating its persistence. 

 

Resources

• Kunutsor S, Walley J, Katabira E, et al. Using Mobile Phones to Improve Clinic Attendance amongst an Antiretroviral Treatment Cohort in Rural Uganda: A Cross-sectional and Prospective Cohort Study. AIDS and Behav. 2010; 14 (6): 1347-1352
• Boesten, J. and Nana Poku eds. (2009). Gender and HIV/AIDS. Critical Perspectives from the Developing World, Ashgate.
• Boesten, J. (2009) Transactable Sex and Unsafe Practices: Gender and Sex when Living with HIV/AIDS, Boesten and Poku (eds.) Gender and AIDS, Ashgate.