Vincent Mayanja, Kampala | Tuesday
SCIENTISTS from the United States and Uganda have unveiled plans for Africa’s first major Aids facility to train medical personnel and give patients high standards of care.
The $11-million facility is being funded by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, and will be based in Kampala as part of the city’s main Mulago Hospital.
Pfizer was one of the 39 pharmaceutical companies which recently backed down after taking the South African government to court over its plans for cheaper access to pharmaceuticals.
The facility is expected to open later this year or early 2001, said Nelson Sewankambu, who is chairman of the project, known as the Academic Alliance for Aids Care and Prevention in Africa.
“This is a major step forward,” Thomas Quinn of John Hopkins University said at the launching.
“Too often, African doctors have to send their tests to labs far away from their clinics, but now we’ll have facilities on site for diagnosis of HIV, tuberculosis, opportunistic infections and sexually transmitted diseases,” he said.
The launching was attended by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
HIV rates in Uganda have been pushed down from 30% to eight percent over the last two decades thanks to public awareness campaigns, but the scourge continues to take a devastating toll on the country.
“It has hit mostly the productive age group of our society,” Museveni said.
“I am not part of that chorus that pharmaceutical companies should provide free drugs, but international governments should start up a fund to help these companies in their research costs,” Museveni said.
Last week Pfizer announced it would provide 50 of the world’s poorest countries with unlimited supplies of the anti-Aids drug, Diflucan, to treat patients free of charge.
Diflucan is an anti-fungal drug used to treat cryptococcal meningitis, a potentially fatal brain affliction which occurs in about one Aids sufferer in 10 in later stages of the disease.
The Aids facility hopes to improve HIV sufferers’ access to anti-retroviral drugs (ARV), and will use diagnostic technology to determine which ARV treatments are appropriate for Africa.
Only 1.2 % of about 810 000 persons living with the Aids in Uganda can afford ARV medicine that costs up to $100 a month in a country where the annual average per capita income is $340.
US and Ugandan scientists are currently negotiating with companies that manufacture ARVs to have supplies on hand when the clinic open its doors, project members said.
Jorrold Ellner, a professor of medicine at New Jersey Medical School, said the clinic “will have an influence far beyond the doctors trained in it and the patients it will treat.”
“It is a reverse pyramid, as each doctor can train dozens of other doctors, and each doctor can treat 200-300 Aids patients at any one time. Other centres could be established across the continent,” Ellner said.
Uganda’s Makerere University is also a joint sponsor of the project.
Some 70% of the world’s HIV cases, or 24.5 million people, live in sub-Saharan Africa — home to some 10% of the global population, according to the UN Aids agency. – AFP
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