Simiso Sokhela
Director for Clinical Research, Ezintsha
Dr. Simiso Sokhela is a published clinician and researcher with extensive experience in managing HIV, TB, and NCDs, having worked in South Africa’s public and private health sectors for over 20 years before joining Ezintsha as a Senior Research Clinician more than a decade ago. Drawing on her operational and clinical governance expertise, she co-led the establishment of HIV treatment research sites, ensuring optimal clinical outcomes for HIV and, more recently, COVID-19 trial participants.
Her main research interest is in designing, conducting, and disseminating clinical trials of novel HIV treatment strategies in Southern Africa, with the aim of influencing national and global guidelines to improve the quality of life of people living with HIV. She is Principal Investigator on several large-scale investigator-initiated and Pharma trials on HIV treatment, COVID-19 prevention and treatment, and TB vaccines. Notably, she leads the ADVANCE study, a landmark randomized clinical trial that defined the current standard of HIV care and identified emerging drug toxicities, including treatment-emergent obesity linked to dolutegravir and tenofovir alafenamide and its role in hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular risk. She also contributes to training programs with the Foundation for Professional Development and the South African HIV Clinicians Society and recently chaired the African HIV & Women Workshop in 2024 and 2025.
Why is now the time to pursue the GLISTEN initiative?
“It’s been coming for a while.
Now is the time because Africa needs to rise and set its own agenda and let its scientists start to dictate what happens to the continent.”
What do you see as the most exciting opportunities for the GLISTEN initiative?
“It’s the coming together of minds.
The fact that we have all these brilliant scientists that have not come together and now that we’re coming together, we can’t wait to see what comes out of the thinking of all of these brilliant African minds.”
What is your message or challenge to peers in the scientific community?
“It is time for us to think for ourselves.
It is time for us as Africans, to think for our communities and to think was is actually the burden of our communities and work to solve that, because that is the only way we can make an impact in the health of communities that we work with.”
