Rockville and Cape Town - The Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation has appointed South Africa's Professor Hoosen Coovadia to its board of directors.

"Coovadia will bring to Aeras a tremendous expertise in tuberculosis and clinical research capacity building with a unique South African perspective," said Dr Jerald C Sadoff, the president and chief executive officer of the Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation.

"He is one of the world's foremost experts on paediatric HIV/AIDS. Because TB and HIV are increasingly associated in many vulnerable populations, his expertise in these areas will contribute significantly to our work."

Coovadia holds the Victor Daitz Chair in HIV/AIDS Research and is the director of biomedical science and the Centre for HIV/AIDS Networking at the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He was previously the professor and head of paediatrics and child health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

The foundation says he has made substantial contributions in the field of paediatric disease, including definitive work on nephrosis in South African children, malnutrition and immunity and measles. He has also conducted groundbreaking research in the transmission of HIV from mother to child.

A tireless leader in the struggle for a democratic South Africa, he was elected the vice-president of the Natal Indian Congress in the 1970s. In 1999, then president Nelson Mandela awarded him the Star of South Africa for his contribution to democracy and health.

He has received numerous accolades for his work in human rights and medical research. In 2000, he received the International Association of Physicians in AIDS and Care Award, the Heroes in Medicine Award and the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights. He was also elected a foreign member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.

A medical doctor, he studied medicine in Bombay, in India, then specialised in paediatrics at the University of Natal. He became a Fellow of the College of Paediatricians of the College of Medicine of South Africa in 1971. He holds a masters of science in immunology from the University of Birmingham and received his doctorate of medicine from the University of Natal in 1978.

About Aeras

The Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation is a non-profit organisation working as a product development partnership to develop new tuberculosis vaccines and ensure that they are distributed to all who need them around the world.

It is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Netherlands ministry of foreign affairs, the Danish International Development Agency, the Research Council of Norway and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Aeras is based in Rockville, Maryland, in the US, where it operates a state-of-the-art manufacturing and laboratory facility.

In 2008, Aeras established an office in Cape Town to facilitate collaboration among clinical trial research partners in South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.

For more information about Aeras, click here.