Stellenbosch University's Centre for Infectious Diseases (CID) was in existence for little more than a decade, yet it achieved many remarkable successes since it was established in 2008 by the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (FMHS).

Its founding director, Professor Jean Nachega, is justifiably proud of its achievements: “Before then, there was no structure on infectious diseases that could cut across departments and bring everyone to the table with common goals.

“The CID's mission was to integrate several disciplines as collaborative functional areas of shared research, teaching and services in infectious diseases. Other important priorities were to build the research capacity of young investigators, international networking, collaboration and fundraising."

Nachega easily recites some facts and figures to illustrate the CID's success in building a valuable multidisciplinary platform at the FMHS to pursue these objectives:

• It raised more than US $15 million (R214 million) in international grants for training and research from various funders, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in the United States (US), the Wellcome Trust in the United Kingdom and the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP);
• It published more than 150 peer-reviewed collaborative articles, including in prestigious journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine and PLOS Medicine; 
• It established new North-South and South-South collaborations with the FMHS; and
• It secured support for Masters, doctoral and postdoctoral students at the FMHS.

“I'm very grateful to Stellenbosch University for giving me the opportunity to be the CID's founding director, and am very proud of its achievements," says Nachega, who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo but left for Belgium in adolescence as a refugee due to civil unrest, and later settled in the US and naturalised as a US citizen.

He received his medical degree and specialised in infectious diseases at the University of Louvain, and obtained a diploma of tropical medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He subsequently completed a Master's in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and a fellowship in Biostatistics of AIDS Research at Harvard University.

Nachega, who was approached by FMHS Dean Prof Jimmy Volmink (then Dean of Research) to launch the centre, was an inspired choice. At the time, Nachega was a Faculty member of JHU and directing its HIV/tuberculosis research programme in Cape Town.

When Volmink asked him to become part-time director of the CID, while retaining his JHU position, he eagerly accepted the challenge. Even when he joined the tenure faculty track at the University of Pittsburgh in 2012, and continued his association with JHU in an adjunct faculty capacity, the CID remained a central focus of his work.

Nachega's efforts over the years have paid off handsomely. In 2011, the CID was among 32 research institutions in Africa recognised as Centres of Excellence in health innovation by the African Network for Drugs and Diagnostics Network (ANDI).

He notched up several individual honours and awards as well during his time at the CID. From 2010 to 2015, he was Principal Investigator for major grants such as the Southern Africa Consortium for Research Excellence (SACORE) funded by the Wellcome Trust and, from 2011 to 2016, for the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI), a consortium of 13 medical schools in 12 sub-Saharan African countries funded by PEPFAR.

“The MEPI and SACORE initiatives provided transformational global partnerships in education and research which led to over 400 peer-reviewed publications, and more than 70 Masters, PhD and postdoctoral fellows graduated," says Nachega.

“And, in 2017, MEPI gave birth to the African Forum for Research and Education in Health (AFREhealth), a pan-African organisation that seeks to work with Ministries of Health, training institutions and other stakeholders to improve the quality of healthcare in Africa through research, education and capacity-building."

In recognition of his leadership, innovative work and publication record, Nachega was accepted in 2019 as a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), which strives to facilitate development on the continent through science and technology.

He looks back at his time at the CID with great fondness: it enabled him to play a key role in combatting infectious diseases on the continent. “Infectious diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis are among the most prevalent diseases in Africa, with high morbidity and high mortality," says Nachega.

He describes his first five years at the CID as particularly rewarding. However, by September 2019 he decided it was time to relinquish the directorship, and stay on as a founder member and concentrate on his scholarly activities as an Extraordinary Professor in the FMHS's Department of Medicine.

He informed FMHS management of his decision, which coincided with an external review of the CID commissioned by a Dean's Management Team (DMT) to evaluate whether it was feasible to continue with the CID and, if so, what steps could be taken to improve its functioning and impact.

“Considering all the information at hand, including the strengthening of research and networks involving infectious diseases over the past decade and the official recognition of a Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine, the DMT and the Executive Head of Departments Committee recommended that the CID be closed," he says. “It was felt that the new environments and changes would efficiently absorb the original mission of the CID."

Yet the legacy of the CID will live on in other ways. “While maintaining my primary tenured faculty position in the Departments of Epidemiology, Infectious Diseases and Microbiology at the University of Pittsburgh, I plan to continue my collaborative HIV and tuberculosis research, teaching and mentoring activities at the FMHS as Extraordinary Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases," says Nachega.

“Also, along with Professor Soraya Seedat, I will continue to serve as Principal Investigator of the NIH Fogarty-funded grant, titled 'Pittsburgh-SU HIV-Comorbidities Research Training Programme', as well as US Principal Investigator on the NIH Fogarty-funded grant, titled 'African Association for Health Professions Education and Research ', awarded to AFREhealth."

Nachega turned his attention to the Covid-19 pandemic as well early last year.  “Covid opened new opportunities for research, which I jumped on right from the beginning," he says. “I galvanised several partners and colleagues, using the network I created under my CID directorship, including MEPI and AFREhealth.

“We created a consortium to do research on Covid, and were the first to publish at continental level on how Covid looks like in Africa." They published 25 papers in just a few months, which provided early insights on the Covid-19 epidemiology, clinical presentation and outcomes in adults, children and pregnant women on the continent.

“I'm very grateful for the opportunity to lead the CID, and to all my wonderful collaborators, staff, students and friends at the FMHS," says Nachega. “They made my job easy, and I look forward to further collaborations under the new Infectious Diseases environment."