Nigel Garrett
Chief Scientific Officer, Desmond Tutu Health Foundation
Associate Professor, University of KwaZulu-Natal (Public Health)
Associate Professor, University of Cape Town (Medicine)
After 12 years as Head of the Vaccine and Pathogenesis Research Programme at the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), Dr. Nigel Garrett recently joined the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation (DTHF) as Chief Scientific Officer. A Specialist Physician in HIV and Genitourinary Medicine, he has conducted over 25 clinical trials and large cohort studies on HIV vaccines, treatment, STI diagnostics, and COVID-19 vaccines. He co-chairs the multi-country COVPN 3008 Ubuntu mRNA COVID-19 vaccine trial and has led major national implementation trials, including Sisonke (JnJ vaccine), where he oversaw the KwaZulu-Natal rollout, and SHERPA (Moderna vaccine).
In 2023, he was appointed Deputy Program Director for Science in the USAID-funded BRILLIANT Consortium, led by SAMRC, to develop, test, and manufacture an HIV vaccine in Africa. He also leads NIH-funded projects on strategies to improve HIV and STI care and served as Technical Writer for the South African National Strategic Plan on HIV, TB, and STIs (2023–2028). He has published over 160 manuscripts with an H-index of 39, and his PhD focused on point-of-care STI diagnostics and expedited partner therapy. An Associate Professor at UKZN, he teaches biostatistics and clinical trials, supervises postgraduate students, and mentors research clinicians, fellows, and investigators at DTHF.
Why is now the time to pursue the GLISTEN initiative?
“We’ve got a young population in Africa and we see that the survivor of HIV treatment has a much higher risk of noncommunicable diseases.
If you look at the larger population, we’ve got huge health challenges and the current health systems are just not strong enough to cope and provide cutting edge treatments for people on a large scale.
In the aging population we see the rise of non-communicable diseases and it’s really important to tackle this problem now and support governments and health providers improve healthcare in this setting.”
What do you see as the most exciting opportunities for the GLISTEN initiative?
“It’s a dynamic new network and it’s Africa-led, which is great.
We learned a lot in the setting from the Covid response and I can see the potential and the energy.
Africa is probably the main emerging market now - a young population - and it must be very attractive for funders and pharmaceutical companies to do research here.”
What is your message or challenge to peers in the scientific community?
“Make sure that we have a good structure in place before getting too large.
Make sure we are always very scientific about what we do and then ensure that we bring the community along. Not just as an after-thought, but continuously educate the community and make them part of the journey because then we will really work with people who are affected by these conditions, and which others will buy into, including funders.”
A message from Nigel
“The burden of non-communicable diseases is enormous in Africa, and health systems are unable to cope. We urgently need to test and implement innovative solutions to improve the health of communities.”
