While the infection and death rates from HIV/AIDS have dramatically declined in this country, the virus is still a brutal killer in many parts of the world. The statistics are shocking. In 20 years, it has taken 21.8 million lives; and even today, the annual infection rate is 5.5 million. That works out to 15,000 new cases each day. Currently, more than 90 percent of those with HIV/AIDS live in areas of Africa and Asia without adequate resources to combat its spread. Sub-Saharan Africa alone is thought to have 25.3 million infected inhabitants.

While the challenge of stopping the spread of HIV and caring for the millions affected by AIDS is daunting, an academic alliance of Western and African infectious disease specialists (alliance) has begun the task. Jerry Ellner, MD, interim chair of medicine at UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School and a world renowned tuberculosis (TB) expert, is a founding member and among the driving forces of the group. The symbiotic relationship between HIV and TB has fueled the spread of both.

The Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention in Africa will soon break ground for the first large-scale HIV/AIDS institute on that continent, to be located at Makerere University Medical School in Kampala, Uganda. Its mission is to train medical personnel from across the continent on the latest treatments and to bring high quality care to patients. An $11 million start-up grant from Pfizer Inc. will build and equip the new institute.

Ellner and other Western experts have worked together with Ugandan medical personnel since 1987, educating them about prevention strategies, introducing effective therapies, setting up clinical trials to curtail transmission and testing vaccines. Statistics collected in a prenatal clinic in Kampala show the effects of their work. In 1985, the maternal infection rate was 11 percent; five years later, it had skyrocketed to 31 percent; by ’98, it had declined to 14 percent; and in 2001, it plummeted to 8 percent.

Ellner says that the new clinic’s influence will go "far beyond the doctors trained in it and the patients whom it treats." He describes it as a reverse pyramid: Each doctor can train dozens of other doctors; and each newly trained doctor can treat 200 to 300 AIDS patients at any given time. He says that other clinics, using the Makerere center’s guidelines, can then be established across Africa.

Africa lacks broad access to a new generation of drugs called anti-retrovirals or protease inhibitors. When used in combination with anti-fungals and other medicines to fight opportunistic infections, the therapy is called an "AIDS cocktail," and has proven highly effective in extending the lifespan and improving the quality of life of those who are HIV-infected. One of the goals of the clinic is to make this therapy more available and to monitor patients closely with sophisticated diagnostic technology.

UMDNJ hosted several faculty members from Makerere University Medical School for a visit to the Newark campus in January. A reception in their honor was held following the January 16 Board of Trustees meeting. The University will develop educational exchange programs in infectious diseases with the Ugandan medical school.