[procaare] Experts To Develop African AIDS Medical Training Center in Uganda

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

Experts To Develop African AIDS Medical Training Center in Uganda
From: www.unfoundation.org

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
E-mail: leela@usa.healthnet.org

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