Centre for Rural Health

The COBALT study is a cluster randomised controlled trial at the level of health clinics in the North West Province in South Africa (SA) to evaluate an intervention for HIV positive adults on antiretroviral treatment (ART) with depression. The relevance of this project to public health is that SA is home to the highest number of HIV positive people in the world and previous research indicates that depression is an important cause for non-adherence to ART. There is little evidence internationally, let alone in low resource settings, on cost-effective treatments in this patient population, or on their impact on HIV, on depression or on cardiovascular and metabolic disease outcomes.