Press Releases
Official Handover Of The University Teaching Hospital Adult Infectious Diseases Center
Lusaka
April 20, 2007
April 20, 2007. The U.S. Ambassador to Zambia, Carmen Martinez handed over the new Adult Infectious Disease Center (AIDC) building to the Minister of Health, Honorable Angela Cifire in a ceremony at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH). The AIDC was constructed for UTH by the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ), and was funded by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) through the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with complimentary resources from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The Centre focuses specifically upon adult infectious diseases, especially HIV/AIDS.
The AIDC will greatly improve clinical service delivery, and excellence in research and training. AIDC, through continued collaboration between UTH, the Ministry of Health, the CDC, CIDRZ, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, will care for Zambia’s sickest AIDS patients, improve Zambians’ clinical service delivery, and perform important, locally-relevant research in HIV/AIDS prevention and therapeutics.
Zambia has had remarkable success with antiretroviral therapies (ART), with 25% ART coverage attained by 2006. ART saves lives, but the management of patients on ART is a complicated matter. The AIDC will operate as a referral center for HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases that will enable sophisticated specialty care for those who develop complications that cannot easily be treated.
The AIDC will train and house highly skilled doctors, nurses, clinical officers and pharmacists to provide this care and treatment and facilitate access to specialty diagnostic tests. In addition, the AIDC has facilities and will provide training for public health workers at all levels of the health sector working in HIV/AIDS.
With so many infectious disease threats in Zambia, there exist many potential roles for AIDC in the research and management of, among other diseases, multi-drug resistant tuberculosis and avian influenza.
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