Professor Anneke Hesseling

Professor Anneke Hesseling is a clinician scientist dedicated to translational clinical research in tuberculosis and HIV in children and other special populations. She is Distinguished Professor in Pediatrics and Child Health, Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, where she is the Director of the Desmond Tutu TB Centre.  

Professor Hesseling has 20 years’ experience in designing and conducting  translational TB research in South Africa and in other high-burden settings and holds the first South African National Research Foundation SARChi chair in Pediatric Tuberculosis.  She has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and her group has been involved in research on drug-resistant and drug-susceptible TB treatment in children, generating key pharmacokinetic and safety data on almost all novel and second-line TB drugs, and translating these novel data into policy and practice, while advocating for better access and optimal formulations through the PADO TB and other processes. 

Amongst other academic responsibilities, Professor Hesseling chairs the NIH-funded International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials (IMPAACT) TB Scientific Committee, with over 15 international trial sites, and leads/co-leads several  therapeutic and prevention IMPAACT protocols, as well as additional CDC-funded TB Trial Consortium (TBTC) studies. She has been the principal investigatof of the TB-CHAMP phase III MDR-TB prevention trial. 

Professor Hesseling has been a member of several WHO guideline development groups and expert groups on TB.