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