The EFFECT health economics sub-study is progressing well. Costing data collection visits to Tanzania have been completed, using the adapted disease specific costing too from the AMBISION trial. A costing visit has also been conducted at the King Edwards Hospital, KZN EFFECT trial site. Initial costing visits have also been completed at the EFFECT UCT site. Costing of EFFECT sites in South Africa will continue throughout 2025 in parallel with the development of the study model as well as data cleaning for both clinical outcomes and patient perspective CRF data.

Ms Buhle Ndweni is in the 3rd year of her PhD at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her PhD thesis is entitled: ‘Economic evaluation of diagnostics in the reduction of fungal infection-related mortality among people living with advanced HIV disease’. Her work on building an HIV-associated Histoplasmosis costing tool and building a separate costing tool for the HIV-associated PCP cohort observational study is ongoing. She has completed building a decision model for the HIV-associated PCP diagnostics and is steadily progressing towards obtaining the datasets required for the next phase of undertaking an economic evaluation: cost-effectiveness analysis.

Ms Bui Thu Hien enrolled at the Hanoi University of Public Health at the end of October 2024 as a full-time PhD student. The provisional title of her thesis is ‘Health Economics Assessment of Talaromycosis Screening Program for People with Advanced HIV Disease in Vietnam’.