INDICES> HIV/AIDS information centre in Uganda

[Leela McCullough <leela@usa.healthnet.org>]

INDICES> HIV/AIDS information centre in Uganda
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>From www.unfoundation.org

HIV/AIDS: Experts To Develop African Medical Training Center
African and Western infectious disease experts have formed an alliance
to build the first state-of-the-art AIDS medical training facility in
Africa in an effort to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The facility,
whose creation was formally announced yesterday, will be built in
Uganda and is expected to be completed in early 2002 with funding
provided by the Pfizer Foundation. "It's going to be a gold-standard
kind of place, which is unrealistic in terms of care (elsewhere) in
Uganda, but we think we need that kind of facility for training," said
Canadian physician Allan Ronald , one of the co-founders of the
alliance.
The center will be run by the Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and
Prevention in Africa and the Ugandan government. The center will train
health care personnel all over Africa in the latest AIDS treatment
techniques, including management of complex drugs. Those professionals
are then expected to return to their hospitals and clinics to pass on
the knowledge to their staffs. The alliance is already working with
pharmaceutical companies to make available donated or low-cost clinic
supplies (Canadian Press, 11 Jun).

Besides training as many as 80 African clinicians a year, the center
is also expected
to treat up to 50,000 patients "with the kind of care that is
available in the
developed world but not yet widely used in Africa," said Nelson
Sewankambo , dean of Uganda's Makerere University medical school (Karl
Vick, Washington Post, 12 Jun).

"This new approach will complement the work our own doctors are doing
and enrich the experience and knowledge of experts involved in the
project both in Uganda and in North America and Europe," said Ugandan
President Yoweri Museveni in a statement. "The clinic will have an
influence far beyond the doctors trained in it and the patients whom
we treat," said Dr. Jerrold Ellner , another founding alliance member
and one of the world's leading tuberculosis experts. "It is a reverse
pyramid. Each doctor can train dozens of other doctors and each doctor
can treat 200 to 300 AIDS patients at any one time" (Canadian Press).

One of the US doctors involved in the project, Thomas Quinn, said that
Kampala was chosen as the site for the training center because Uganda
has been the most successful African country in its campaign to fight
HIV/AIDS (Andrew Craig, BBC Online , 11 Jun).

Pfizer Inc., the world's second largest drug maker, said it will spend
$11 million
over the next three years to establish the training center. Pfizer
chair Henry McKinnell said he also intends to lobby fellow
manufacturers of AIDS treatment drugs to donate or deeply discount
another $50 million annually of advanced anti-retroviral drugs.
"We're eliminating their excuses," said the alliance's co-director,
Merle Sande ,
referring to pharmaceutical companies (Vick, Washington Post).

McKinnell also said he hopes his company will maintain support for the
project for at least a decade. Members of the alliance are hopeful the
new center will prove it is possible to establish an effective and
sustainable HIV/AIDS care system in Africa, and said the project's
success could negate arguments that improving drug affordability is
futile in a region lacking proper health infrastructure. "No one would
have an excuse any
more to say we cannot introduce anti-retrovirals into Africa because
we do not have
an effective infrastructure," Sande said (Mark Turner, Financial
Times, 12 Jun).

The alliance is working closely with the public health and medical
communities in
Uganda and intends to actively seek assistance from the Ugandan Health
Ministry,
local organizations, the staff and faculty at Makerere University
Medical School and
Mulago Hospital, the national hospital of Uganda (Academic Alliance
for AIDS Care & Prevention in Africa release, 11 Jun).


______________________________________________

Dr. Leela McCullough
Director of Information Services

SATELLIFE
30 California Street, Watertown, MA 02472, USA
Tel: +617-926-9400    Fax: +617-926-1212
Email: leela@usa.healthnet.org
Web: http://www.healthnet.org


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