Grants Expand IU-Kenya AIDS Outreach
Fourteen years ago, the Department of Medicine established a program
in Kenya to provide an educational opportunity for residents, students
and faculty in the developing world. The primary purpose was to
reinforce the altruistic spirit of medicine. More than five hundred
of our University family have traveled to Kenya and served at the
Moi University Faculty of Health Sciences and its partner the Moi
Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, Kenya. In return, more
than sixty students and faculty from Kenya have come to IU to learn,
teach and conduct research. Most, if not all, would describe their
experience life-altering.
The partnership has expanded beyond internal medicine to a wide
range of disciplines including surgery, pediatrics, radiology, Ob/Gyn,
anesthesia, and others. Faculty and students from IUSM’s statewide
medical education centers, the IU Schools of Nursing, Dentistry
and Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (formerly Allied Health Sciences)
and other universities have benefited from IU’s unique partnership
with Moi.
At the onset of the program, a number of patients seen at Moi Hospital
carried HIV/AIDS. In the last decade, the disease has taken an unfathomable
toll of lives; not only in Kenya but in all of sub-Saharan Africa.
We were compelled to change the orientation of our program; along
with our Kenyan partners, we forged the Academic Model for the Prevention
and Treatment for HIV/AIDS (AMPATH). In February, efforts of many
attracted a one-year, $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Agency for
International Development, $500,000 in drugs, and a proposed additional
four years of funding (see related
story).
In March the news got even better when AMPATH received $15 million
through a $125 million award from the Centers for Disease Control
to Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
These grants allow IU and Moi physicians to boost the number of
HIV patients they treat from 2,000 to 30,000! They will establish
HIV treatment and prevention programs in six rural Kenyan communities.
And they will bring much-needed drugs to treat AIDS patients.
Although small, AMPATH was a success story before the recent generous
grants were made. The program treated HIV/AIDS with modern therapies
and it instituted a successful mother-to-child transmission prevention
project. The program has educated community groups about HIV, its
prevention and the need for testing.
We are grateful for dedicated people who have made AMPATH and our
exchange program a success. Folks like professor emeritus Joe Mamlin,
who continues to serve in Kenya; John Sidle, assistant professor
of medicine; Bob Einterz, our assistant dean of international programs
and director of the IU-Moi Partnership; and Bill Tierney, have brought
leadership and vision to the partnership these many years. Their
efforts have attracted the resources that can give people hope.
Clearly, IU and Moi have formed more than a partnership. We have
built a sustainable program that creates more learned doctors and
other health care workers. Together, we have forged an enduring
bond that touches lives in both of our countries, especially the
desperately ill of Kenya. Placing the needs of others above one’s
own is an important value in medicine; this program exemplifies
that ideal.
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