Abstract:
Partnerships between academic medical
center (AMCs) in North America and the
developing world are uniquely capable
of fulfilling the tripartite needs of care,
training, and research required to
address health care crises in the
developing world. Moreover, the
institutional resources and credibility of
AMCs can provide the foundation to
build systems of care with long-term
sustainability, even in resource-poor
settings.
The authors describe a partnership
between Indiana University School of
Medicine and Moi University and Moi
Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kenya that demonstrates the power of an
academic medical partnership in its
response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in
sub-Saharan Africa. Through the
Academic Model for the Prevention and
Treatment of HIV/AIDS, the partnership
currently treats over 40,000 HIV-positive
patients at 19 urban and rural sites in
western Kenya, now enrolls nearly 2,000
new HIV positive patients every month,
feeds up to 30,000 people weekly,
enables economic security, fosters HIV
prevention, tests more than 25,000
pregnant women annually for HIV,
engages communities, and is developing
a robust electronic information system.The partnership evolved from a program
of limited size and a focus on general
internal medicine into one of the largest
and most comprehensive HIV/AIDS-
control systems in sub-Saharan Africa.
The partnership’s rapid increase in scale,
combined with the comprehensive and
long-term approach to the region’s
health care needs, provides a twinning
model that can and should be replicated
to address the shameful fact that millions
are dying of preventable and treatable
diseases in the developing world.
