HIV/AIDS Training Center to Be Built in Uganda

Arlene Silva
2001-06-13

Pfizer, Inc. will contribute $11 million towards the development of a state-of-the-art and much needed AIDS training facility.

The United Nations Foundation recently announced that African and Western infectious disease experts, with funding from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, Inc., will join forces to create an African medical training center in Uganda. The center, which is expected to train roughly 80 African clinicians per year and treat up to 50,000 AIDS patients, will be run by the Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention in Africa and the Ugandan government. Health care professionals will be trained in the latest AIDS treatment techniques and complex drug management, and will then be expected to return to their hospitals and clinics to educate their staffs.

�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,� said Dr. Jerrold Ellner, a founding alliance member and leading tuberculosis expert. The center is expected to be completed in early 2002.

To read the full text of the article that appeared in the UNWire, please visit http://www.unfoundation.org/unwire/index.asp#15216