Terishia Hariram

Terishia Hariram is a paediatrician and honorary clinical fellow in the School of Clinical Medicine at UKZN. She is currently building her career as a clinician researcher, conducting doctoral research that investigates the role of the gut microbiome in perpetuating chronic malnutrition (stunting) in HIV-infected children on anti-retroviral therapy (ART), using next generation sequencing techniques. With the changing epidemiology of HIV infection in Sub-Saharan Africa since ART, attenuating the risk of non-AIDS related morbidity in children and adolescents on ART has become a global and national research priority. Her aim is to pilot exploratory metagenomic research in this high-risk sub-group of children, with the potential to inform future interventional studies, which could ultimately improve stunting and impact positively on their long-term outcomes.