East Africa International Epidemiologic Database (IeDEA) Regional Consortium

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Investigator: Jeffrey Martin, MD, MPH
Sponsor: Indiana University

Location(s): Kenya; Uganda; Tanzania

Description

Indiana University, with partners at UCSF, Columbia University, New York University, Moi University in Kenya and Mbarara University in Uganda and support from the World Health Organization and various agencies and private foundations, have established a number of extensive HIV/AIDS treatment and research networks in the East African nations of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. This initiative has created a regional data center for East Africa as part of the IeDEA Consortium. The Center not only merges and shares data among current and future partners, but also offers unparalleled research capacity to identify and address questions that are amendable to combined regional database analysis.

In Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, the three countries within the East African IeDEA Consortium have adult HIV prevalence rates ranging between 5-10%. Since the advent of the global antiretroviral therapy (ART) rollout in 2003, there has been a dramatic increase in coverage to 65% coverage in Kenya, 53% in Uganda, and 44% in Tanzania by the end of 2009.  Key questions remain throughout the course of a patient’s engagement in care, from the pre- ART period through ART-initiation, initial clinical response to ART and regimen durability (occurrence of adverse events and drug resistance), to long-term maintenance, loss to follow-up (LTFU), and death. It is the long-range goal of this consortium to provide answers to the questions that clinicians, programs, and ministries of health consider fundamental to the evolution and sustainability of their long term HIV care and treatment strategies.