[e-drug] HIV/AIDS Centre in Uganda

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

E-drug: HIV/AIDS Centre in Uganda
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Dear all,
an encouraging development,
Leela

>From http://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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