Rebecca “Ribka” Berhanu, MD
Global Health Topics: TB, TB/HIV co-infection, TB diagnostics, drug-resistant TB
Country: South Africa
Ribka Berhanu is an infectious diseases physician and clinical TB researcher. She is an assistant professor in the department of medicine at the Vanderbilt University Medical Centre and divides her time between Johannesburg and Nashville, where she works closely with the Perinatal HIV Research Unit and the Health Economics and Epidemiology Research Office of the Wits Health Consortium. Her clinical work in the US and South Africa is focused on the care of hospitalized patients with HIV and complex infectious diseases.
Ribka’s research is centered on TB transmission and the impact of molecular TB diagnostics. She is funded through an NIH K08 training grant to study the application of network analysis, geospatial analysis, and whole genome sequencing to understand non-household transmission of TB in South Africa.