Pepper wins top award

Dr Dominique Pepper's work on tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS has earned him the prestigious European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership Award as its 2009 Outstanding Junior African Scientist. The accolade, which comes with a purse of €10 000 (around R110 000), aims at fostering the research activities of the winner, and to strengthen clinical research capacity in Sub-Saharan Africa. In his study, Pepper, a physician-in-training at UCT, found that 40% of patients experienced clinical deterioration. Some 26% of whom required hospital admission for new AIDS-defining illnesses and tuberculosis-associated immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome. His work further highlights a need for more progressive strategies in anti-retroviral treatment and tuberculosis programmes.

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