CAPRISA was formally established in 2002 under the NIH-funded Comprehensive International Program of Research on AIDS (CIPRA) by five partner institutions. CAPRISA is supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Department of Health and Human Services (Grant # 1U19AI51794) ¹⁾

Registration Number: 2002/024027/08

The Centre for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa was founded by the Universities of Natal, Cape Town, and the Western Cape, the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, and the National Institute for Communicable Diseases.

The founding members are aware of the extent of the AIDS pandemic and the effect that it is having on the populations of South Africa in particular, and on communities in developing countries in general. Since they have experience, skills and expertise in a number of scientific and medical areas which they have already put to use in developing and understanding of, and various means to deal with the AIDS pandemic, each of the members believes that collaboration and co-operation with each other and with other parties will bring together a pool of experience and expertise that will have the potential to make seminal contributions to the understanding of aspects of the AIDS pandemic.

CAPRISA's goal is to develop and undertake globally relevant and locally responsive research that contributes to understanding HIV pathogenesis and epidemiology as well as HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention. Also to build local research infrastructure through cores of expertise and to provide training through research fellowships tenable both in South Africa, the United States of America and elsewhere. ²⁾

Written for PANDA by Karen Harradine, edited by Chris Waldburger - October 2, 2022

CAPRISA itself is classed as a non-profit company that generates most of its revenue from grants and is exempt from income tax. In 2021, as a director of CAPRISA, Salim S Abdool Karim’s total remuneration was more than R3 million. Quarraisha Abdool Karim is also a director, having earned over R2.3 million in the same year. Together, the Karims earned a total of R5.4 million from CAPRISA, which also paid for over R1.6 million of travel expenses in the same year.

This is the background of Karim. This is the global public health ecosystem from which he suddenly emerged into the public eye, just as the country and the world were starting to embrace radical new policies that all had the concept of ‘social distance’ at their heart. ³⁾

In February 2021, the SAMRC joined forces with CAPRISA, the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation (Tutu Foundation, itself a $12.7 million grant recipient from the BMGF in August 2021), Janssen and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) to run a trial for the latter’s Covid-19 vaccine.

Called the Sisonke Study, this vaccine trial was outsourced to CAPRISA by Professor Glenda Gray, the current president and CEO of the SAMRC. She was granted funding by Janssen, the pharmaceutical arm of J&J, and by the BMGF to trial the J&J vaccine.

Gray later collaborated with former Health Minister, Zweli Mkhize, to purchase half a million doses of the J&J vaccine. Glenda Gray’s close ties with Karim are indicated by her decision to grant CAPRISA an award for vaccine performance in an HIV trial (an HIV vaccine remains elusive after forty years of research and trials), and honour Karim with a lifetime achievement award by the SAMRC. In February, South Africa’s Minister of Health, Joe Phaahla, appointed both Gray and Karim to sit on a high profile adjudication panel deciding on Covid-19 vaccinations for children.

By TimesLIVE - 04 February 2022

Health minister Joe Phaahla has appointed a five-member appeal committee to adjudicate a challenge to the Covid-19 vaccination of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 years.

The organisation Free the Children — Save the Nation has formally appealed the decision to approve vaccines for children, arguing this age group is effectively not at risk from the coronavirus and therefore does not require vaccination for their protection.

The organisation — together with the ACDP, the Caring Healthcare Workers Coalition and Covid Care Alliance — late last year launched an application before the high court in Pretoria seeking an urgent interdict to halt the rollout of children’s vaccinations.

In October Phaahla announced that the government would open Covid-19 vaccinations to children older than 12. Under section 24A of the Medicines and Related Substances Act, the minister said he had appointed a five-member appeal committee to adjudicate on the matter. The committee members are:

• advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi SC, chairperson;
• Prof Salim Abdool Karim;
• Dr Stephen Schmidt;
• Dr Herman Edeling; and
• Prof Glenda Gray. ⁴⁾