Act against Aids

Annual Report: Effective research thanks to consistent data

2021 our IT team continued to develop our patient database. Electronic transmission of lab results facilitates the work and helps improve the quality of data. Thanks to reliable data, our team can conduct research on HIV/Aids in Zimbabwe and improve data quality on a permanent basis..

For years we have been developing and refining the clinic’s proprietary software, Electronic Point of Care (ePOC), on an ongoing basis. Every patient has a personal medical record in the electronic database. Newly developed software called Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) enables lab results to be uploaded direct to the database. This facilitates lab work and reduces errors. Now two additional employees are working in the lab, and there is a new machine for diagnosing various sexually transmitted diseases. Since the end of the year, we’ve also been running these tests for external institutions.

Data from the clinic for research
High-quality data from patients help the research team contributing to HIV/Aids research. In a study our lab manager, Tinei Shamu, showed that among our patients the most frequent types of cancer are the result of viral infections. This underscores the importance of early HIV treatment, HPV vaccination, and cervical cancer provision. Our team has also been looking into treatment success among people aged over 50. In over 94 % of these patients, the viral load was permanently suppressed. Although, more than 40 % had high blood pressure requiring treatment. A publication by our psychologist Bahati Kasimonje indicated that more research is required to improve adherence among young people. It showed how the efficacy of therapeutic approaches can be proven scientifically. Our research team is also working with the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM) at the University of Bern to look into long-term data from our clinic. The research team published a total of four scientific papers and is currently involved in ten research studies.

You will find research publications on the Newlands Clinic website.