United Press International - July 19, 2004
Ellen Beck, United Press International

The 43-year-old husband and father of two children, who lives near Philadelphia, had been working for Abbott Laboratories' Diagnostics Division, in sales and marketing, for more than a decade when a trip to Kenya in 2001, to visit a friend, turned into one of those rare, life-changing events.

What Wilson saw while touring a hospital and orphanage -- the sick and dying in tuberculosis wards and children who had watched both parents die of AIDS -- "stunned, deeply moved and saddened" him, he told United Press International in a telephone interview last week from Bangkok, Thailand, where he was attending the XV International AIDS Conference.

After a lot of soul searching, Wilson said he found a way to use his skills setting up infrastructure and equipment to test blood in U.S. hospital labs to give people who had no chance to live a reason to hope. He found himself not in Kenya, however, but in Tanzania, in sub-Sahara Africa, where 2 million of the 33 million people living there have HIV/AIDS and the death rate from the disease is expected to increase by more than half by 2010. Because of HIV/AIDS, life expectancy in Tanzania is expected to drop from 65 years to 37 years.

Following is a Q&A with UPI with Wilson about his journeys.

Q. After your "vacation" to Kenya, what did you do?

A. After my trip to Kenya I came home and just lamented a great deal over having seen what I saw. I felt some sort of a moral responsibility and a need to do something. I, for a year or so, just researched and learned everything I could about HIV/AIDS and then considered leaving Abbott, quite frankly, to do some mission work myself, but it just really wasn't practical for my wife and I. Then I discovered Abbott has this program called Tanzania Care and I wanted to become a part of it.

So I sent an e-mail to Abbott CEO Miles White, and in that e-mail I told him what I had seen in Kenya and then I told him that I'd love to come apply my skills and knowledge of clinical laboratories, as well as other skills I had around organization and project management. I wanted to try to help the cause and within two weeks of that e-mail I was contacted by senior executives at Abbott and then had a couple of interviews and then came to work for the Tanzania Care program.

Q. What did you do for the program and how did you apply your skills?

A. Tanzania Care is a partnership between Abbott and the government of Tanzania and what we are doing there is rehabilitating the country's public healthcare infrastructure. We're building an outpatient clinic that will serve people with HIV/AIDS and we're also rehabilitating the country's national laboratory at the Muhimbili hospital in Dar es Salaam, that's the capital of Tanzania.

This laboratory is going to be like a shining example of a modern laboratory in Africa. Basically the skills that I'm using there are the skills that I have learned in setting up laboratories with Abbott. We're also building Voluntary Counseling and Testing centers, called a VCT centers, and we're doing those in 16 of the country's regional hospitals. Those centers each will have small laboratories and serve as an entry point for people into the healthcare system. So basically there is a lot of laboratory work involved in treating people with HIV/AIDS and I have experience in understanding equipment, laboratory design and speaking with laboratory people.

Q. How difficult was it working with a foreign government and with a healthcare structure you are not used to?

A. If I think of the time that I've spent over the years in clinical laboratories in hospitals, I was quite used to understanding the work flow or really understanding the needs for training people. For example, for the last couple of years when I was with the diagnostics division my group set up about 300 pieces of equipment in laboratories. Each piece of equipment involved training people, involved logistics with field service engineers, setting the equipment up, making sure that it worked. So those same types of skills we're using in Tanzania.

Q. What kind of impact will this have on the people of Tanzania?

A. I was just at dinner (at the AIDS conference) with a gentleman who is a professor at the medical college at the Muhimbili hospital and he related to me a story ... and it was one particular patient that came in that he treated and this guy had full-blown AIDS. This doctor said there were hundreds of stories like this -- he had no way to treat these people. They didn't have the infrastructure they needed, they didn't have the buildings, they didn't have the supplies, they didn't have the equipment and because they've been underfunded for so long they didn't have the training that they needed. He said to me -- and he actually got a tear in his eye as he was saying this -- that now with this outpatient clinic that we're about to open in the first quarter of next year, now he'll be able to give his countryman, his people, his friends a chance to survive.

So it won't have a small impact. In my mind it will have a big impact on a lot of individuals whose lives I believe will be saved because of the good work that Abbott's doing in Tanzania. I don't want to blabber too much about it but it's so easy to get lost in the buildings and in the infrastructure, the need to train people. But the times I've been in Tanzania, the people that I've seen who have been sick, they are such sweet, nice, kind people and I believe that they deserve a chance and that's what this program will give them.

Q. What's your future in this program?

A. I travel a lot. I live in the Philadelphia area and spent time at Abbott Park near Chicago and also I'm in Tanzania quite frequently. I travel there about once a month. It's not really practical for our family right now to move there, although I have fallen in love with that country.

Q. It's been suggested by AIDS policy experts there is a lack of government commitment to tackle the HIV/AIDS problem in some African countries hardest hit by the epidemic. What is your view of the government situation in Tanzania?

A. Six months ago I was just a regular kind of guy working a job and I thought I didn't have anything to offer. When I came to Tanzania, which is like many other countries in sub-Sahara Africa, I saw wonderful people and a government with a strong commitment but certainly a great need from the ground up.

We can't just ship in the drugs, we can't airlift them in and drop them off. What we need to do is first build the buildings and then train the people -- and then make sure we can have a reliable supply chain to get the products in. When I think of this -- this is the analogy I try to develop in my head: That what we're doing is putting down the track that the train of anti-retroviral therapy can run upon.

We need to have the infrastructure, we need to have the capacity built, and these people deserve it. They are human beings and they deserve a chance. Other people at other companies, and other folks that are like me, if they learn a little bit about the people, and learn it is individuals and it's not just statistics, maybe more people will be motivated to try to get involved and try to make a difference.

Ellen Beck is UPI's Health Policy Editor. E-mail ebeck@upi.com

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