UCT Sustainability and the SDGs 2022 - Report - Page 15
Desmond Tutu Health Foundation
2022 projects include:
The Desmond Tutu Health Foundation (DTHF) is a notfor-profit organisation affiliated with the Desmond Tutu
HIV Centre (DTHC) within the Department of Medicine.
Together they form a Centre of Excellence focusing
on research, community awareness, and resource
development in the prevention and treatment of HIV/
AIDS, TB and related infections.
• Supporting Sustained HIV Treatment Adherence after
Initiation (SUSTAIN) Study: this work aims to improve
adherence to anti-retroviral (ART) drugs in the South
African public sector. In 2022, the study recruited 510
patients at three City of Cape Town ART clinics.
• FASTPrEP Project: Adolescent girls and young women
remain at disproportionately high risk of HIV infection
in sub-Saharan Africa. Pre-exposure prophylaxis
(PrEP) is an effective biomedical tool to prevent HIV
infection, but uptake and continued use by key risk
groups such as adolescent girls, young women, and
men who have sex with men has so far been low in
South Africa.
• FastPrEP uses an innovative differentiated approach
to roll out and scale PrEP to the key risk groups
identified. FastPrEP is funded by the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation and in 2022 was implemented in
the Klipfontein-Mitchells Plain Health Substructure in
Cape Town.
In addition to their health service research and clinician
training programmes, they run several mobile and
community-based projects for clinical, operational,
and epidemiological research as well as community
mobilisation and HIV prevention activities.
Sustainability and the SDGs 2022 – 15
