Salim S. Abdool Karim, MBChB, PhD, FRS, is a clinical infectious diseases epidemiologist who is widely recognized for his scientific contributions to HIV prevention and treatment. He is director of the Centre for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) and CAPRISA Professor of Global Health in Epidemiology at Columbia University. ¹⁾

Dec 2020 Bill Gates tribute - Quarraisha Abdool Karim and Salim Abdool Karim are two of the most respected HIV/AIDS researchers in the world. This year, the wife-and-husband team has also helped shape the world’s response to COVID-19. But it was a more humble setting that sparked their careers in epidemiology more than 30 years ago.

In 2001, they brought together a group of researchers they felt could make a bigger impact on HIV and named the group CAPRISA (for the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa). Today CAPRISA runs three clinics where they provide antiretrovirals to people living with HIV and study new approaches to treating and preventing the disease. It is regarded as one of the world’s most influential AIDS research programs. ²⁾

Prof Salim S. Abdool Karim, FRS. Director of CAPRISA (Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa)

Salim S. Abdool Karim, FRS, is a South African clinical infectious diseases epidemiologist widely recognized for scientific and leadership contributions in AIDS and Covid-19.

Professor Abdool Karim is Director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), Durban, and CAPRISA Professor of Global Health at Columbia University, New York. He is an Adjunct Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard University, Boston, Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Cornell University, New York, and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban. He previously served as President of the SAMRC South African Medical Research Council.

He is a member of the Science Council of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the WHO TB-HIV Task Force. He is a Vice-President of the International Science Council. He is a Member of the Africa Task Force for Coronavirus, the African Union Commission on Covid-19 and the Lancet Commission on COVID-19.

Professor Abdool Karim is ranked among the world’s most highly cited scientists by Web of Science. He serves on the Boards of several prestigious journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet Global Health and Lancet HIV. He is a member of the US National Academy of Medicine.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society. ³⁾

Substack Oct 2, 2022 Written for PANDA by Karen Harradine, edited by Chris Waldburger

Professor Karim and the Web of Lockdown Contradictions and Untruths | Part 1 of 3 His life and work under the religious mantle of science

In March 2020, the South African government, in lockstep with other countries, and in apparent contradiction with decades of documented pandemic planning, implemented a nationwide lockdown on all its citizens. At the heart of this radical new policy was Professor Salim S. Abdool Karim.

Professor Karim, together with his wife, Professor Quarraisha Abdool Karim, founded the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) in 2002. Along with South African institutions such as the University of Cape Town, the University of the Western Cape, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, and the National Research Foundation, CAPRISA collaborates with the United Nations, and was founded under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health in the USA and the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York.

Karim’s Covid-19 MAC regularly recommended lockdowns to achieve ‘zero Covid’ in South Africa. Yet, while he was leading the MAC, Karim wrote an article for the New England Journal of Medicine in May 2020 acknowledging the punitive effects of lockdowns on the economy, the poor, and those with chronic diseases like tuberculosis (TB) and HIV. He also noted:

“Poverty and unemployment mean many people live in informal settlements where implementing preventive interventions such as hand washing and social distancing is difficult.”

If lockdowns cause such damage, and if their intentions are so compromised by our socio-economic circumstances, why were they pushed so hard by the likes of Karim? ⁴⁾

For the past twelve years he has sat on the BMGF’s Scientific Advisory Committee. In December 2020, Bill Gates penned a tribute to both Karim and his wife, ⁵⁾ praising them for their roles in leading AIDS and Covid-19 research, and promoting them as pandemic experts. These married scientists are leading the way on HIV

Salim S. Abdool Karim is a South African clinical infectious diseases epidemiologist who is widely recognized for his research contributions in HIV prevention and treatment. He is director of the Centre for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) and CAPRISA professor of global health at Columbia University. ⁶⁾