Dr Kim Steegen

Dr Kim Steegen is a senior scientist at the National Health Laboratory Service, Johannesburg, South Africa. Dr Steegen holds a PhD in Medical Sciences from the Ghent University in Belgium. From the start of her Masters, her research efforts have been largely focussed on HIV for the past 18 years, with a strong focus on improving diagnostic services for people living with HIV, especially in the context of HIV drug resistance testing. This is supported by over 30 peer reviewed publications. She was a post-doctoral fellow at Janssen Diagnostics, Belgium for 3 years prior to moving to South Africa. 

Since 2011, she has been managing the HIV drug resistance laboratory at the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Hospital and has been actively involved in increasing HIV drug resistance testing capacity in the South African public sector. A grant-funded project allowed to set-up 3 extra HIV drug resistance testing laboratories in the NHLS, and provided HIV drug-resistance training for technologists, scientists and virologists. 

Since 2017, she has also been the chair of the NHLS HIV drug resistance committee, where the emphasis is on standardization of HIV drug resistance testing as well as ensuring adequate quality control measures are adhered to across all laboratories. She’s a member of the WHO Steering Group that provides high level guidance and supports in developing and implementing WHO global HIV drug resistance prevention, surveillance and response strategy and co-chairs the WHO Working Group 4, on Laboratory Capacity.