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Communicable & Infectious Disease
Tuberculosis, HIV, viral hepatitis, antimicrobial resistance, and emerging zoonotic disease across the Karoo livestock corridor. Anchored by the Karoo Institute for Translational Genomics.
Fourteen research centres, four cross-cutting themes, R287m in active grants and 312 peer-reviewed papers last year — built around the diseases that actually walk through the doors of Tswelopele.
Each theme is a horizontal community of practice across multiple centres — not a department, and not a silo. We chose this shape because the questions our patients pose do not respect them.
Tuberculosis, HIV, viral hepatitis, antimicrobial resistance, and emerging zoonotic disease across the Karoo livestock corridor. Anchored by the Karoo Institute for Translational Genomics.
Rheumatic heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and the metabolic-syndrome cluster, with a particular interest in rural-rural and rural-urban transitions.
District-level health systems strengthening, rural emergency networks, maternal and child outcomes, and the economics of outreach care.
Pathogen genomics, host genetics in regional populations, and the Karoo Biobank — a long-term cohort of more than 11,200 consented Karoo residents.
For three years, our team has used genomic surveillance to track a previously uncharacterised Mycobacterium tuberculosis lineage moving along the seasonal labour corridor between the Karoo and the Boland. The phylogenetic tree, reconstructed from 1,840 isolates, revealed clear superspreader nodes and a distinctive resistance pattern.
The work is now informing Western Cape’s revised contact-tracing protocols, and a follow-on grant from the SAMRC will extend the platform to seven additional districts.
We did not set out to write a paper. We set out to understand why three of our patients kept being reinfected by something that looked like the same strain. The genome told us the rest.
Naidoo A, Khumalo V, Maseko S, et al. (2026). Genomic surveillance of M. tuberculosis in a Western Cape farming corridor. Nature Microbiology, 11(3), 312–325.
Director: Prof. Anika Naidoo. Pathogen and host genomics, Karoo Biobank.
Our publication record is open and searchable. The 2025 cohort included 312 peer-reviewed papers across The Lancet, Nature Microbiology, the South African Medical Journal, BMJ Open, the Pan African Medical Journal, the African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine, and 84 other journals.
The Faculty subscribes to the AfricArXiv preprint mandate — every manuscript is deposited as a preprint within seven days of submission. All Faculty-funded clinical-trial outputs are registered on the Pan African Clinical Trials Registry.
Phase III, 460 participants. PI: Dr V. Khumalo.
Clinical scientist fellowships, post-doctoral fellowships, and the Karoo Africa Research Fellowship for early-career investigators based elsewhere on the continent.
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