Advisory Board

Dr Mike Youle helped found the Kobler Clinic in London in 1986, the first purpose built integrated care and research centre in the UK for HIV and associated conditions. After working as a Consultant for the World Health Organization’s Global Programme on AIDS in Kampala, Uganda from 1991-2, he has devoted his entire career to the clinical care of HIV patients and research to further that end.

Since 1996 he has been the Director of HIV Clinical Research at London’s Royal Free Hospital. In 2010 he founded JUSTRI, www.justri.org, a not-for-profit organization which educates and provides resources to improve HIV, viral hepatitis and tuberculosis (TB) care in many regions, including South East Europe, the Middle East and North Africa and India. His professional activities currently include a visiting professorship at Belgrade University, Serbia and board/committee memberships for various organizations such as the European AIDS Clinical Society (EACS) and the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

Thembi Moyo was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and trained as a Registered Nurse in 1981 but left soon after because of the unrest and persecution in the early 80s. She was working in Botswana when the HIV/AIDS epidemic began as the Sister in charge of the local clinic, where she was responsible for educating the community about this new disease. She notes ‘We were accused of scaremongering and cynics duped AIDS to stand for America’s Idea of Discouraging Sex! I had the most job satisfaction working in HIV care, but when I left Botswana at the end of 1999, I was burnt out. My patients were dying and we could not do anything, except support the family and help them die in dignity .The local hospital discharged them home for “Home Based Care “and this was one of my onerous responsibilities.

Thembi has been a nurse in the NHS for 16 years, 13 of which in HIV/Sexual health, currently at Lewisham hospital She also undertakes Community work with THT and helps as a pillar of our NURSETRI work.

Dr Laura Waters is a genitourinary medicine (GUM)/HIV consultant and the HIV & viral hepatitis lead at the Mortimer Market Centre, London, where she works predominantly in outpatient services. She previously worked at Chelsea & Westminster and Brighton hospitals, gaining an MD on ART simplification and switch and is currently principal investigator on several antiretroviral trials. Laura is the chair of the British HIV Association (BHIVA) treatment guidelines, vice-chair of the conferences sub-committee and a member of the executive committee. She is chairing the forthcoming update of the BHIVA/BASHH/FSRH SRH guidelines for PLWH and is on the HIV CRG including the Drugs subgroup and the CRG PrEP subcommittee. She has published and presented widely and is a regular columnist for Boyz magazine.

Jane Bruton has worked in HIV since 1986. For 12 years, she was the ward sister on the first HIV ward opened in London and then a Senior Nurse at Chelsea & Westminster hospital, for 14 years, managing HIV outpatients, day care and the inpatient ward. She is currently working as a clinical research nurse in the Patient Experience Research Centre at Imperial College where she is conducting a qualitative study into living with HIV, with an interest in patient’s experience of health care.

She has a Masters in Medical Anthropology and worked with HIV patients in rural Uganda before the availability of ART. She has extensive experience in teaching in many different settings and has worked with NURSETRI for 4 years. Jane co-authored the NHIVNA Competencies and the Nurses Sexual Health Competencies and is a Trustee for Positively UK. Her main areas of experience and interest are the development of nursing roles in HIV (task shifting), patient engagement and involvement and nursing in general.

She is involved in the development of HIV and viral hepatitis guidelines with several national and European organizations as well as for the World Health Organization. She also acts as a consultant for the Medicine Patent Pool under the auspices of UNITAID and is a member of the scientific advisory board of UNAIDS.

Dr. Sanjay Bhagani is a Consultant Physician in Infectious Diseases and HIV Medicine at the Royal Free Hospital, London and honorary Senior Lecturer in Infectious Diseases at University College London.

He is the head of the multi-disciplinary HIV/hepatitis co-infection service at the Royal Free, a tertiary referral service for all aspects of HIV/viral hepatitis ranging from access to phase 2/3 clinical trials for new agents to joint liver transplant assessment and post-transplant care.

His research interests include epidemiological, virological and clinical aspects of acute HCV amongst HIV+ MSM, use of non-invasive tests for liver assessment in resource-rich and resource-limited settings, implementation and clinical research in the management of viral hepatitis and HIV co-infection in resource-limited settings and clinical trials for new agents for treating HCV and HBV.

Sanjay is the current chair of the BHIVA Viral Hepatitis group and serves on the HIV/hepatitis guidelines committee for BHIVA and the EACS. He is also on the Editorial boards of AIDS Therapy and Research and BMC Hepatology, Medicine and Policy and is a trustee at AIDS Orphan. He has a passion for teaching and is currently on the steering committee for the EACS Advance HIV course and a member of the board of examiners for the Diploma in HIV Medicine, UK.

Dr Alison Rodger is a Reader in Infectious Diseases at University College London and Consultant in Infectious Diseases/HIV at the Royal Free Hospital in London.

Her clinical interest is in co-infections with HIV, and with Dr Bhagani she runs the viral hepatitis/HIV clinic at the Royal Free.

Alison is a co-author of BHIVA guidelines on hepatitis co-infection, immunisations, and post-exposure prophylaxis.

She co-chairs the BHIVA/BASHH guideline writing group for PrEP. Her academic pursuits are in HIV transmission, HIV testing and prevention.

Dr Patrick Ingiliz is a Consultant in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the Center for Infectiology in Berlin, Germany. He specialised in infectiology at the University of Bonn, Germany, followed by a research fellowship in the Liver Unit at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, Paris, France, before returning to Germany to assume his current position.

His main fields of interest are in HIV infection and co-infection with viral hepatitis and his clinical research focuses on acute HCV infection, liver fibrosis progression and steatohepatitis in HIV infection. He is actively involved in numerous trials studying direct-acting antiviral agents in HIV/HCV co-infected patients as well as mono-infected patients. A national and international collaborator, Dr Ingiliz has also worked as part of a HIV/AIDS programme in sub-Saharan Africa which aimed to implement antiretroviral therapy in Malawi.

Dr Marc Lipman is a Senior Lecturer & Honorary Consultant Physician in Respiratory & HIV Medicine.  He is Director of the University College London (UCL)-TB Centre. He trained in Clinical Academic Medicine in Cambridge, London, and as a Harkness Fellow in Baltimore, based at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Aside from heading up a large clinical TB & HIV service, his present commitments include: UK NICE TB Clinical Guidelines Development & Service Delivery Groups; Public Health England National Respiratory Programme Board and the TB National Knowledge Project; UK MDR TB Expert Advisory Group and the WHO/European Respiratory Society MDR TB Consilium.

He is the former Co-lead for TB in London and Chair of the British Thoracic Society TB Specialist Advisory Group. His research interests focus on tuberculosis, HIV and respiratory disease seeking to enable high quality, evidence-based care to be provided to people at risk of TB and other related diseases. He is currently involved in a wide variety of translational and health services research programmes across the UK.