Our organisation has submitted a project proposal titled MULTILINK-HIV under the European funding call HORIZON-JU-GH-EDCTP3-2026-01-HIV-03-two-stage: Global collaboration action towards better prevention, treatment and clinical management of HIV coinfections or co-morbidities in sub-Saharan Africa.
The proposal addresses a major emerging public health challenge in sub-Saharan Africa: the growing prevalence of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) among people living with HIV. While the widespread scale-up of antiretroviral therapy (ART) has significantly improved survival rates, regional health systems remain largely structured around vertical, single-disease programmes. This lack of integration between HIV services and chronic care management frequently leads to undiagnosed or poorly controlled co-morbidities, polypharmacy, adverse drug–drug interactions, avoidable hospital readmissions, and escalated health system costs.
To tackle these inefficiencies, the MULTILINK-HIV project will evaluate an Integrated Clinical Management Package (ICMP) tailored for individuals living with HIV who are admitted to hospital with acute illnesses and concurrent co-morbidities. The intervention aims to institutionalise systematic screening, treatment optimisation, safe medication management, and robust linkage to long-term care following hospital discharge.
The efficacy of the ICMP will be evaluated through a pragmatic, cluster-randomised controlled trial embedded within routine hospital practice across sub-Saharan Africa. This clinical trial will be complemented by health economics and implementation research designed to inform and facilitate future scalable deployment.
The project is led by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (United Kingdom) and involves an international consortium including Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (Tanzania), The Good Samaritan Foundation (Tanzania), the University of Bristol (United Kingdom), the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme (Malawi), and R-Evolution Worldwide.
Through this collaboration, the consortium aims to generate evidence to support more integrated, safe, and sustainable models of care for people living with HIV and co-morbidities, in line with EDCTP priorities on health system strengthening and improved clinical management in sub-Saharan Africa.
