Sabine Hermans

Sabine Hermans is a Dutch Infectious Diseases physician and epidemiologist. She joined   the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation as a postdoctoral fellow in October 2013.

Dr Hermans trained as a medical doctor and infectious diseases specialist in the Netherlands. From 2008 to 2012 she was based at the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI), part of Makerere University College of Health Sciences in Kampala, Uganda, seconded by the University of Utrecht and later the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development. She set up and headed the integrated TB/HIV clinic at the IDI, which she combined with research leading toward the completion of her PhD at the University of Utrecht in June 2012. She subsequently moved to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where she obtained her MSc in Epidemiology in 2013.

A 3 year postdoctoral fellowship granted by the European Commission has allowed Dr Hermans to come to the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation, seconded by the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development at the University of Amsterdam. She is currently working on epidemiological analyses of a decade of data on tuberculosis in the City of Cape Town, with the aim of developing a mathematical model of TB in the city. Dr Hermans also works as a clinician at the Hannan Crusaid Antiretroviral Treatment Centre in Gugulethu, Cape Town.

Her research interests include epidemiology of HIV and TB co-infection and operational research into the implementation of optimal strategies of health care delivery. She has also undertaken historical and cost-effectiveness research in this field. She was the principal investigator of a prospective non-randomised interventional study of the effect of a Short Message Service (SMS) reminder service on improving TB treatment completion in Uganda. In 2011 she was awarded the annual International AIDS Society TB-HIV research prize for her operational research on antiretroviral treatment initiation at the IDI integrated TB-HIV clinic.