Our History
Aurum Health Research was established in 1998 in the mining town of Welkom, in the Free State Province of South Africa.
In 2005 Aurum Health Research gained its independence from AngloGold Ashanti Health Service and became The Aurum Institute, a registered not for profit, public benefit organisation. It was founded to meet the needs of AngloGold Ashanti with respect to TB, HIV and occupational lung diseases through epidemiology and implementing a research programme (Thibela). The Thibela study became the first large-scale intervention of its kind,enrolling 80,000 participants.
Key Milestones
Key Milestones
1998
Aurum is established to respond to the HIV and TB pandemics in the Southern African gold mining industry.
AURUM
2002
Aurum is contracted by the Anglo American group to design and implement its HIV treatment programme.
2004
President Nelson Mandela launches the Thibela TB study - a large cluster randomised trial aimed at showing that population-wide TB preventive therapy could rapidly and radically reduce TB rates among gold miners.
2007
Thibela TB receives an inaugural award from the Good Clinical Practice Journal for the most innovative patient recruitment strategy.
2008
Tembisa Clinical Research Centre joins Aurum’s Rustenburg and Klerksdorp clinical trial sites to focus on HIV vaccine trials.
Tembisa
2010
Professor Gavin Churchyard appointed Chair of the WHO/TDR Disease Reference Group for Tuberculosis, Leprosy and Buruli Ulcer.
Prof Gavin ChurchyardGroup Chief Executive Officer
Prof Gavin Churchyard is a specialist physician, internationally renowned for his contributions in tuberculosis (TB).
2011
Thibela TB Study ended, having provided Isoniazid preventive therapy to over 30 000 gold miners.
Aurum leads evaluation of national rollout of Xpert MTB/Rif in South Africa.
Aurum secures 2 large grants from PEPFAR to pursue ending the HIV epidemic in 20 districts in South Africa.
2012
Aurum completes over 8000 medical male circumcisions at its Winnie Mandela Clinical site in its first year of operation.
8000
2013
Aurum commences a programme of technical support in digital X-Ray screening for TB in all South African correctional facilities and rural areas.
2014
23 Jan 2014: The results of the Thibela TB Study are published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
2015
Aug 2015: Results of XTEND Study published in The Lancet Global Health.
Host-directed therapy trial: In 2015, a multimillion-dollar application for funding was submitted to and awarded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for an Aurum investigator-initiated TB treatment plus hostdirected therapy (TB HDT) trial.
XTEND
STUDY
Aurum becomes one of the largest HVTN HIV vaccine clinical research partners in the world.
2017
Aurum’s International Division is established to take the Board-approved diversification strategy forward into new countries in Africa and globally.
Aurum is awarded a $59 million, 5 year grant from Unitaid for the IMPAACT4TB project to catalyse the global health impact of a new, shortcourse treatment for preventing TB in 12 high -burden countries in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, India and South East Asia.
The Health Systems Division renews a $45m grant from PEPFAR through the CDC to help end the HIV epidemic in South Africa.
2018
A leading clinical trial into the safety and drug interaction of Dolutegravir and Rifapentine is established and executed in record time to inform global policy on TB prevention in the modern era.
Aurum opens offices in Ghana and Mozambique, gaining its first TB grants in those countries under the IMPAACT4TB programme.
Group CEO Prof Gavin Churchyard is a Commissioner on and contributor to the Lancet Commission Series on TB.
