By Martha Henry The Botswana equivalent of knock knock is ko ko. For the Botswana Combination Prevention Project field team, trying to contact family members of the 20% of randomly selected households in each village is their biggest challenge.
Sent: October 30, 2013 Subject: YA TSIE-In the Field Hi, This is to confirm that the YA TSIE Study—The Botswana Combination Prevention Project (BCPP) is underway and the team deployed today 30th October in the field at both Ranaka and Digawana. While there have been challenges and some initial delay in study initiation, it is with great confidence in the team and their ability to rise up to challenges that…
Continue reading “The Inner Life of a Complex Clinical Trial”
In the Setswana language, the name of the Botswana Combination Prevention Project is Ya Tsie, a term Dr. Mompati Mmalane came up with. The name comes from a proverb that roughly translates as “Teamwork bears more fruit than individual effort.” Mmalane explains: “In the past, we used to gather locusts to eat. If you put locusts in a bag, they will fly out. To keep them in, somebody has to…
By Martha Henry Tourists who visit Botswana’s scenic Okavango Delta rarely visit Shakawe, the most remote village participating in the Botswana Combination Prevention Project (BCPP), a large HIV-prevention trial of over 100,000 people. The results of the trial will likely end up as an orderly table published in a prestigious medical journal. Though the numbers in that table may provide much-needed evidence on how best to operate HIV/AIDS programs across the globe,…
Continue reading “A Month in Shakawe: The Field Team at Work”
When the field team for the Botswana Combination Prevention Project arrives in a village, loudspeakers announce the start of the study. Our people! Greetings to you all! We are members of the Ya Tsie study which you might have heard about already at a recent Kgotla meeting or have read about it in the flyers posted in different places in your village. This is to let you know that we…
By Martha Henry Each of the two field teams for the Botswana Combination Prevention Project (BCPP) consists of 16 Research Assistants (RAs), seven drivers, two supervisors, two lab assistants, and two IT assistants. Team members come from across Botswana. In addition to Setswana, many of the RAs speak other local languages. They range in age from early 20s to late 30s. Many of them worked as HIV counselors before joining…
By Martha Henry It’s unlikely that you’ll ever meet anyone more focused than Max Essex. A 1986 New York Times profile described him as “mild mannered” with “a thatch of thick hair” and “among those in the forefront of the worldwide effort to find a cure for acquired immune deficiency syndrome.” Today, though his hair is white, that description still fits. Essex, now in his 70s, still arrives at the…
By Martha Henry The end of AIDS as a public health threat may not come from an effective vaccine, as many had hoped for decades, but from a collaborative effort across nations to prevent new HIV infections. The epidemic that spread mainly through sexual connections may be subdued not from a single breakthrough, but through long-term transnational collaborations.
