Page 61 - SAMRC Annual Report 2023-24

PERFORMANCE INFORMATION

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS UNDER THIS PROGRAMME

Child and Adolescent Lung
Health Research Unit

Unit director:
Prof. Heather Zar

Prioritising responsive research Equitable capacity development
through impactful interventions for empowering communities

The Child and Adolescent Lung Health Research Unit staff have been involved in building capacity at
Unit has focused on the following areas in child local, regional, and international recruitment sites
health: (1) developmental origins of child health in in the field of childhood tuberculosis diagnostics.
an established birth cohort study (the Drakenstein Research team members have trained District nursing
Child Health study), and the association of and medical staff across Cape Town, in Uganda
early life exposures with the emergence of non- and in Mozambique on strengthened strategies
communicable diseases (2) childhood TB focused on for diagnosis in children. Community engagement
strategies to improve timely diagnosis and treatment activities in the DCHS have involved engaging with
(3) childhood pneumonia with epidemiological, the local school on a project to repaint the school
aetiological and long term outcome studies as including a beautiful mural, in which school children
well as clinical trials studies of new RSV preventive participated to create. A video on lung health in
interventions to prevent RSV-disease in infants young children was produced with a focus on lung
(4) a randomised controlled trial of a novel way of function. Engagement with mothers and children
delivering surfactant with nebulisation, for treatment also focused on the consequences of being born
of lung disease of prematurity (5) determinants of premature and factors that can promote health. An
illness and spectrum of disease in a longitudinal educational pamphlet on preventing pre-term birth
cohort study of adolescents living with HIV who are and on factors to strengthen health in premature
well established on ART (Cape Town Adolescent babies was produced and widely disseminated.
antiretroviral cohort), with a focus on development The 10-year anniversary of DCHS was celebrated
of sub-clinical cardiac impairment. with community engagement initiatives and
messages that promote child health and cognitive
These studies have produced data that has impacted development.
on clinical guidelines and informed potential new
interventions and policies e.g. WHO guidelines Science for creating a
and revised SA guidelines for TB diagnosis in
children; data on the efficacy of new RSV preventive healthier society
interventions in infants has contributed to global By conducting clinical and laboratory trainings,
implementation in several countries and is currently the unit has been involved in developing skills
under consideration in SA. of laboratory and clinical staff in lower resource

SAMRC ANNUAL REPOR T 2023-24 59