Posted on April 26, 2004 at 10:45 a.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), in collaboration with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, has been awarded three, five-year grants totaling $20 million to provide HIV/AIDS care and treatment to individuals in Zambia, located in the in sub-Saharan region of Africa. The initiative, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is part of President George Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief aimed at providing antiretroviral therapy to low-income individuals in third world countries.

“We are on the front lines every day and witness this pandemic literally destroying entire families and communities,” said Dr. Jeffrey S. A. Stringer, UAB assistant professor of obstetrics/gynecology with the Center for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia, a UAB partnering HIV research and prevention site. “These desperately needed resources will help us create hope where there has been virtually none and will make a dramatic difference in the lives of so many.”

The funding will cover all aspects of modern medical care for HIV-infected people in Zambia. “Care will include combination antiretroviral medications, or AIDS cocktails, that until now have been prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of people in Zambia who desperately need care,” Stringer said. As many as 25,000 HIV-infected people are expected to be under the program's care by the end of the five-year grant period. Of those individuals, more than 10,000 are expected to be ill enough to require antiretroviral medications.

A large, multidisciplinary team from UAB, including representatives from the UAB Center for AIDS Research, the UAB School of Public Health, and various departments within the School of Medicine will team with Zambian health care workers to administer the new treatment program at three provincial hospitals and a number of neighborhood clinics in Zambia. The program will begin in the capital city of Lusaka and build on an extremely successful program to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission that was established by Stringer’s wife, Dr. Elizabeth Stringer with support from the Glaser Foundation.

The Center for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia was established in 1999 by UAB faculty members and their Zambian colleagues to facilitate training and research collaborations between Zambian health care professionals and UAB. Drs. Jeff and Elizabeth Stringer relocated to Lusaka in 2001.

Sites such as UAB’s Zambia clinic that are already actively involved in HIV prevention are an ideal setting to introduce care and treatment for HIV-positive women, their families and the community at-large. “UAB’s Zambia operation is a large-scale research, training and clinical care effort,” said Dr. Sten Vermund, professor of epidemiology and director of the Division of Geographic Medicine. “In recent years, the program has attracted Zambian physicians and other health care professionals to UAB to pursue master’s degrees in public health — knowledge they are now using to step up the fight against HIV/AIDS in their home country.”

Zambia is among the world’s worst HIV/AIDS affected countries. In the city of Lusaka, where most of the UAB activities take place, one in four pregnant women is infected with the virus. Nationwide, one in five adults is infected with HIV. It is also among the world’s poorest countries, with 92 percent of population living on less than $2 a day.

NOTE: The University of Alabama at Birmingham is a separate, independent campus from the University of Alabama, which is located in Tuscaloosa. Please use University of Alabama at Birmingham on first reference and UAB on second reference.