Dr Welile Sikhondze

Dr Welile Sikhondze is the Technical Advisor and Research Coordinator at the Swaziland National TB Control Program (NTCP). She has undergone MPH (Clinical Epidemiology) training at the University of Cape Town following her Medical training. Her main responsibilities in TB control in Swaziland are; Strategic planning, coordination with other implementing partners, research work and sustainable funding mobilization to implement priority TB research and surveillance activities. She has conducted a lot of operational research in the areas of epidemiology and clinical research and is currently the Co-Principal Investigator for both the National TB Prevalence Survey & anti-TB Drug Resistance Survey.

Dr Sikhondze has been working for the NTCP since 2014 and led the NTCP in a successful Joint TB/HIV grant application to the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria for funding of prioritized TB Control activities (2015 – 2018). She also led the successful development and detailed costing of the Swaziland TB National Strategic Plan (2015 – 2019) and the development of a National TB Operations Research Plan (2017 - 2019) to strengthen the successful control of TB, TB/HIV and Drug-resistant TB in Swaziland.