U.S. Tanzania AIDS Deal

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A public-private partnership will enable the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative (BIPAI) to significantly expand its network of centers of excellence in Sub-Saharan Africa by building two clinics in Tanzania, a country hit hard by HIV/AIDS.

On September 2, the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) announced a grant award to BIPAI of $22.5 million over five years to support the operations of the two centers of excellence and associated satellite clinic facilities.

Mr. Jakaya Kikwete, president of the United Republic of Tanzania, participated in the announcement in Washington, D.C. The Tanzanian government is working in partnership with BIPAI to establish the two centers in Mbeya and Mwanza and to ensure their integration into existing public health programs. It is expected that the centers will provide care directly to at least 15,000 children. Another 4,400 children will receive care in associated satellite facilities.

“Africa has probably benefited the most from the current U.S. presidency than it has previously,” he said in reference to PEPFAR, the largest commitment ever made by a single nation toward an international healthcare initiative—a five-year, U.S. $15 billion, comprehensive approach to combating HIV/AIDS around the world.

President Kikwete lauded the BIPAI, which is based at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. It has secured additional funding totaling more than $6 million for the Tanzania program from several private donors, including the Abbott Fund, the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, Jan and Dan Duncan and the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word.

The new centers of excellence in Tanzania will be the seventh and eighth established by BIPAI in Africa. Dr. Mark Kline, president of BIPAI, said the large country in East Africa is home to about 1.4 million people with HIV/AIDS. Currently, there are few resources for the care and treatment of HIV-infected children.

“We are thrilled to partner with the government of Tanzania in the establishment of these new children’s centers of excellence. We are deeply grateful to PEPFAR and to the U.S. Agency for International Development and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention teams for all of their support, as well as to the generous private donors that made all of this possible,” said Kline, also professor of pediatrics at BCM and chief of retrovirology at Texas Children’s Hospital.

This is the first time BIPAI has located two centers of excellence in one country. Other African centers are located in Botswana, Malawi, Uganda, Lesotho, Burkina Faso and Swaziland. Satellite clinics and outreach programs also have been established by BIPAI in each country to maximize the reach and impact of the centers of excellence. The first BIPAI center of excellence was established in Constanta, Romania in 2001.

The centers of excellence provide comprehensive pediatric and family-centered HIV/AIDS care and treatment. BIPAI provides ongoing support to each center, including health professional training and strengthening of health systems. Relationships will be established between existing BIPAI centers of excellence in Kampala, Uganda and Lilongwe, Malawi, and the new centers in Mwanza and Mbeya, for purposes of supporting the implementation of all clinical programs.

The Mwanza region has a population of nearly 3 million and a 7.2 percent HIV prevalence rate. The Mbeya region has a population of over 2 million, and an HIV prevalence rate of 13.5 percent.

-BIPAI and PEPFAR provided background details to this article.

Jesse Masai is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.