Sicelo Masangwana closes his office door in Somkele, a settlement of about 6 000 people near Mtubatuba in northern KwaZulu-Natal.
He walks the 10 or so steps towards the foyer of the building where a room full of people aged 20 await him, wipes across his forehead and takes a deep breath.
Its going to be a long day, he smiles.
Outside, children are playing football barefoot in the dusty street that leads into the village from the tarred highway. Every now and again people pop in and out of their homes while doing their daily chores, as they usually do by mid-morning on weekdays.
Todays a typical Tuesday in March its autumn at about 10.30am.
In the Mtubatuba municipality, roughly 50km north of Richards Bay, about 1% of people are sick with TB; the disease usually shows up as someone losing weight, having night sweats, an ongoing fever or a never-ending cough.
TB rates here are high, at least partly, because of the HIV infection rate being high too: about three in 10 people have contracted the virus, which ups their chance for getting TB (people with HIV are up to 20 times more likely to get TB than people without HIV).
Masangwana is a researcher at the Africa Health Research Institute (Ahri). Hes coordinating a clinical trial here thats part of a big study that will test how well a potential new TB vaccine called M72/AS01E works.
An earlier, smaller trial of the vaccine (called a phase two trial ) showed that the jab could protect at least half of people who are infected with TB from falling ill. The vaccine was also shown to be safe. This finding told scientists that the vaccine has great promise and is worth testing in another round, this time in a bigger group of people .
This step, called a phase three trial and which involves testing the vaccine in thousands of people, is what Masangwana is focusing on. It will be no small feat. But, he says we have a very experienced team [for running
