Einterz
 The award will allow the IU-Moi program to provide preventive and medical care to more than 30,000 adults and children at eight sites in western Kenya, including six new clinics in rural communities. |
A five-year, $15 million award has been made to the HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment program created by the Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM), the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital and the Moi University Faculty of Health Sciences in Kenya. It is the second largest federally funded award to be received by the medical school.
The funding is part of a $125 million award to Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and administered by the Centers for Disease Control. Columbia leads a consortium of university programs aimed at reducing the spread of AIDS in Africa, which includes the IU-Moi program for HIV/AIDS.
IUSM medical students, post-graduate physicians and providers of HIV care will participate in the program.
Dr. Robert Einterz, assistant dean for international programs at IUSM and director of the IU-Moi program, believes the program benefits both IU and its students. One of his goals is to help IU realize its role as a global citizen by reaching out to sub-Saharan Africa to halt the mounting number of deaths and illnesses due to HIV/AIDS.
He also believes that participating in the IU-Moi program stimulates medical students’ curiosity and provides new context for diseases they typically do not see in their most extreme and life-threatening stages in the U.S.
“In addition,” said Einterz, “by developing this program, we’re reinforcing the values that we teach our students and that most people want in their physicians.” In February, the IU-Moi program for HIV/AIDS received a one-year, $1.6 million grant and $500,000 for medications awarded by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. That program is administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development. IUSM anticipates additional funding from USAID for the IU-Moi program over the next five years.
The USAID and CDC funding will allow the IU-Moi program, named the Academic Model for the Prevention and Treatment for HIV/AIDS (AMPATH), to provide preventive and medical care to more than 30,000 adults and children at eight sites in western Kenya, including six new clinics in rural communities. It also funds the building of six new rural treatment sites, an enterprise program that assures sustainable economic security for affected Kenyan families, two farms that supply high quality macro-nutrition to HIV-infected families, installation of an electronic medical record system to support patient care, teaching and research, and additional laboratory services needed to serve a wide region of western Kenya.
|
