AEGiS-WSJ:Pfizer to Fund a Ugandan Clinic To Teach AIDS-Related Treatment

A consortium of doctors from Uganda and North America is expected to announce on Monday that Pfizer Inc. will fund the construction and operation of a training clinic for AIDS physicians in Kampala, Uganda.

The clinic, to be located at Makerere University Medical School in Kampala, will instruct about 80 African doctors a year in the treatment of AIDS patients, with particular emphasis on the proper use of antiviral drugs, the organizers said. Pfizer, a New York drug maker, plans to provide $11 million over three years to underwrite the program. The announcement comes on the heels of Pfizer's decision to expand the giveaway of Diflucan, an antifungal drug used to treat infections in HIV/AIDS patients, to roughly 50 developing-world countries.

Pfizer to Offer Diflucan Free for Patients With AIDS in Least-Developed Countries (June 6)

AIDS Hits African Area Hardest; Pfizer Announces Drug Giveaway (Nov.29)

The organizers of the training program expect the medical professionals from Uganda and elsewhere in Africa to spread the lessons to their colleagues upon their return home from the four-week sessions.

"We will be able to train the physicians, nurses and hopefully laboratory technicians, and all this would contribute to the quality of care," said Nelson Sewankambo, dean of the Makerere Medical School and a founding member of the consortium called the Academic Alliance for AIDS Care & Prevention in Africa. Uganda has been a leader in AIDS prevention. Even so, an estimated 820,000 people out of a population of 23 million have HIV/AIDS, Dr. Sewankambo said. The clinic will be operated in cooperation with the Ugandan government and expects to treat about 50,000 patients a year.

The organizers are negotiating with other pharmaceutical companies to provide medicine for the clinic, which will open late this year or in early 2002. Many drug makers have said they were reluctant to offer AIDS drugs free or at cost in African countries because the medicines, if they were used improperly, could be toxic or might lead quickly to resistant strains of HIV.

"We're taking away that excuse," said Merle Sande, chairman of internal medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, and a leader of the alliance. "We're trying to give them credible infrastructures."

Dr. Sande said he approached Pfizer about six months ago with the idea for the project. He said that he and several AIDS researchers who had worked in Uganda felt that it was time to try to improve clinical care there rather than just study the disease. Pfizer, he said, agreed to fund the project about six weeks ago. Construction of the training facility, the clinic and a laboratory is expected to begin this summer, Dr. Sande said, and the first students are anticipated early next year.

Lou Clemente, executive vice president for corporate affairs at Pfizer, said, "We think that Pfizer and the industry should do more than provide drugs for free or at discounts." He added that drug companies should help "tackle the obstacles of infrastructure and weak medical systems." Pfizer has been the subject of protests from AIDS activists who want the drug company to do more to help patients in Africa.

"While it's late in coming, it's good news," said Eric Sawyer, an AIDS activist and a founder of the ACT UP New York group. Drug companies, such as Pfizer, he said, "have a responsibility to educate and train physicians and to help build infrastructure in the developing world in the same way they've done that in the U.S."

But Mr. Sawyer said that drug companies have acted slowly on prior promises of assistance. "We will watch this endeavor very closely to make sure they do deliver all the things they're promising," he said.

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