EMAIL info@witsecho.org.za | TEL +27 (0)11.547.5000 | FAX +27 (0)11.484.4144
ECHO - Head Office
4th Floor, TMI Building, Gate 13, Empire Road & Joubert Extension
Braamfontein, Johannesburg, South Africa
Postal Address
Postnet Suite 189, Private Bag X2600
Houghton, 2041, South Africa
Together, Dr Tammy Meyers, Dr Harry Moultrie, Dr Ashraf Coovadia and Professor Gayle Sherman, collectively direct ECHO. ECHO is all about Enhancing Children’s HIV Outcomes. Our main goal is to scale-up paediatric HIV prevention and care; improve the quality sustainability of services through strengthening the public health system.
We run a range of services that provide support, information and representation for infants, children and adolescents infected or affected by HIV. We are committed to improving access to holistic HIV prevention and care for these youngsters, as well as informing the general public about the truth of HIV to reduce misconceptions and promote support and understanding around the subject. Through our work, we hope to improve HIV prevention, enable early diagnosis and treatment as well as provide comprehensive training and support to the many healthcare workers with whom we are we are involved.
Essentially, ECHO operates from three central paediatric HIV clinics in Johannesburg as part of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) academic circuit:
Our work is not limited to these clinics. ECHO is able to provide outreach services in Gauteng to primary and secondary care facilities as well. We do this by using mobile clinical support teams (MCST), made up of a multidisciplinary team of doctors, nurses, counselors and data clerks, which travel to sites and provide valuable on-site direction and support to help deliver paediatric HIV prevention and care.
One of our major achievements, as a result of the ECHO project has been the training of primary healthcare nurses. These nurses are now confident and competent to initiate Anti-Retroviral Treatment (ART) in children. This is a tremendous achievement that will make a difference to many children’s lives.
Through the Paediatric HIV Diagnostic services, a programme run by Prof Sherman, we are able to train primary health care nurses to become confident and competent to scale up early diagnosis of HIV in infants.
We are widening our reach and teams have also been set up in Limpopo Province. This is in collaboration with the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health Pietersburg Hospital, from where they travel to distant sites within the province. More recently a similar team has been established in Mafikeng Central District in the Norwest Province.
ECHO employs more than 100 staff members and interacts with and mentors many public sector healthcare workers.
BA, MBBCh (WITS), FCPaed (SA), Mmed, DTM&H
Tammy qualified as a paediatrician in 1995 at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto. She established a paediatric HIV outpatient service in early 1997, at the hospital, which later became known as the Harriet Shezi Children’s Clinic. She is a leading advocate in the country for the widespread provision of ARV’s for children and adults.
Initially, Tammy and her colleagues led a process to improve the management of HIV in Johannesburg, which resulted in the formation in 1998, of the Wits Paediatric HIV Clinics (WPHC). The clinics were able to provide care for children living with HIV despite the absence, at that time, of antiretroviral therapy.
Since this time she has led an active research unit, becoming an international principal investigator for the NIH-funded Paediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Group (PACTG), which is now known as International Maternal Paediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials (IMPAACT) network.
She was awarded the prestigious Elizabeth Glaser Paediatric Aids Foundation International Leadership Award in 2003 which enabled the employment of additional personnel to assist and support the delivery of quality care to children and their families living with HIV and AIDS. Subsequent to this award, she has leveraged additional funding to rapidly expand a program of increasing HIV care for children out into the community in Gauteng and neighbouring rural provinces.
Today, she serves in a technical advisory capacity to the South African Department of Health for the national antiretroviral rollout program and to the World Health Organisation for the development of paediatric HIV guidelines – and was the lead author for SA National Paediatric HIV Guidelines.
MB.ChB. (UNZA), DCH (CMSA), Dip HIV Man (CMSA) FCP (CMSA) Paed
Born in Ndola, Zambia, Ashraf completed his undergraduate training at the University of Zambia (UNZA) in Lusaka in 1990. After completing his internship (Natalspruit hospital), he gained postgraduate qualifications in Child Health (DCH, 1994) and a Fellowship of the College Physicians (Paediatrics) at the University of Witwatersrand in 1998. He obtained a Diploma in HIV Management in 2006.
Today, Ashraf is a Consultant Paediatrician at the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, University of the Witwatersrand, Coronation Women and Children Hospital in Johannesburg. He currently heads up the outpatient Empilweni Paediatric HIV Clinic at Coronation Hospital. His team provide crucial Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) services in the hospital and run a weekly infant follow up clinic at Coronation.
A postgraduate and undergraduate clinical lecturer on paediatric HIV and AIDS and Basic and Advanced Paediatric Resuscitation at Wits Medical School, Dr Coovadia presented lectures on Paediatric HIV and AIDS at several symposia and clinical meetings.
Ashraf is an executive and founding member of the Wits Paediatric HIV Clinics (WPHC) now known as ECHO. Dr Coovadia is co-convener of the treatment care and support technical task team of the Programme Implementation committee for the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC).
MBBCh (Wits), MMED (Haem), DCH (SA), DTM&H (Wits), PhD
Gayle obtained her PhD in the field of early infant HIV diagnosis in 2007 and is a Co-Founder and Director of ECHO, providing strategic direction for the organisation on an ongoing basis.
Gayle is a Paediatric Haematologist at the National Health Laboratory Service based at Johannesburg Hospital and Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine and Haematology at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her interests include paediatric HIV and thrombosis and she has worked in the field of early diagnosis of HIV in infants for the past 10 yrs.
Prof Sherman is a nationally and internationally recognised expert in the field of infant diagnosis. Her groundbreaking research into establishing affordable, simple mechanisms of diagnosing HIV in infants as early as possible have informed both national and international paediatric HIV guidelines and are impacting on the lives of thousands of infants.
Today, she directs the infant diagnosis research program, is widely published (link to list of references) and has been invited to attend and present at several international meetings. She also serves as a technical advisor to South African National and Provincial Department Health (DoH), as well as the World Health Organisation on early infant diagnosis.
MBBCh (Wits), Master’s in epidemiology, London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
Harry is a co-director of ECHO with whom he has been working since completion of his community service at the end of 2003. Since joining the Wits Paediatric HIV Clinics, Harry has been responsible for the provision of strategic direction for the organisation, including; responsibility for financial management and oversight of the organization; analysis of international and national policies and research outputs relating to HIV prevention, care and treatment; and the formulation of appropriate policy responses.
He has represented the organisation on international, national and provincial committees and conceptualised and developed multi-million grant acquisitions for programmes and projects to scale up children’s access to HIV-related prevention, care and treatment in South Africa.
He has adapted and implemented a chronic disease management tool and database at the Harriet Shezi Children’s Clinic. The database, which was implemented in October 2005, has more than 40 000 clinical visits entered from more than 3 000 children who have attended the clinic. It has been used to write numerous conference abstracts and a number of papers are currently being prepared for publication based on this data. He has also developed and provided oversight for the implementation of project monitoring and evaluation frameworks.
Harry is a member of the South African National Guidelines committee, as well as a member of the World Health Organisation expert working group to determine preferred ARV medicines. He was appointed by the Director General for Health to a national expert task team to draft and finalise the National Strategic Plan for HIV & AIDS for South Africa, 2007-2011 (2007).
