B-MS secures new Pediatric HIV/AIDS Centres

Bristol-Myers Squibb, New York; Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas; and the governments of Lesotho and Swaziland have announced that medical centres focusing on caring for children with HIV/AIDS will be built in Maseru, Lesotho and Mbabane, Swaziland. Both centres are expected to be opened by December 2005.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the world's hardest hit region with the AIDS pandemic, and Lesotho and Swaziland are among the countries with the greatest prevalence of HIV and the greatest need for treatment and training to fight the disease.

The centres will be funded by grants from Bristol-Myers Squibb's Secure The Future programme.

Since 1999, this initiative has provided more than 170 grants for treatment, medical research and community-based programmes targeted to women and children who are infected with and affected by HIV in nine countries in southern and western Africa, including Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Mali and Senegal.

Among the key objectives of Secure The Future are to help build healthcare capacity in these countries, and develop sustainable approaches to addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis that can be replicated in other resource- limited settings.

The new centres will be staffed jointly by Baylor and healthcare professionals from Lesotho, Swaziland and southern Africa. In addition to caring for children, the centres, each of which is located in the national capital, will be used for training healthcare professionals and conducting research for this vulnerable population. The centres will be modeled on the Botswana-Baylor College of Medicine Children's Clinical Centre of Excellence at Princess Marina Hospital in Gaborone, Botswana, also funded by a Secure The Future grant. Opened in June of 2003, the Botswana centre currently cares for more than 1,200 HIV-infected children, one of the largest concentrations of HIV-infected children in care in any centre worldwide. The new centres in Lesotho and Swaziland will be linked to other pediatric AIDS centres operated by Baylor around the world.

'We are proud to be working in partnership with Baylor and the governments of Lesotho and Swaziland to further expand this pioneering pediatric HIV/AIDS program,' John McGoldrick, executive vice president of Bristol-Myers Squibb, said in Johannesburg. 'Thousands of children in these countries are either infected with HIV/AIDS or orphaned as a result of it.' McGoldrick was in South Africa to participate in the Secure The Future Technical Advisory Committee's annual project review. This followed visits to Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland to meet with government officials, and visit clinics and patients.

'We see our support of children's HIV/AIDS centres as an important way for us to realise our mission of extending and enhancing human life,' said Peter Dolan, chairman and chief executive officer, Bristol-Myers Squibb. 'We interpret that mission broadly, from supporting programmes like Secure The Future, to providing innovative therapies that address areas of serious unmet medical need, and expanding global access to medicines.'

'Baylor is extremely grateful to Bristol-Myers Squibb for funding the pediatric AIDS centre in Botswana as well as the new centres in Lesotho and Swaziland. We have been fortunate to find funding from diverse sources for a growing children's centre network that now includes centres in Romania, Botswana, Mexico and Uganda. They represent the core of a growing children's centre network that will cooperate and collaborate on treatment, training and research,' said Dr Mark Kline, director, Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative, Baylor College of Medicine.

'These centres will be a major influence on training and research, and will have an impact not only in southern Africa but also across the world,' Dr Kline said. The other centres are located in Constanta, Romania; Gaborone, Botswana; Mexico City, Mexico; Kampala, Uganda; and Benghazi, Libya. The Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative was established in 1996, and is the largest university-based programme worldwide dedicated to improving the health and lives of HIV-infected children.

'Each of the new centres in southern Africa, like our other facilities, will be a comprehensive, state-of-the-art centre of excellence, with a large outpatient clinic, procedure rooms, pharmacy, laboratory, medical library, conference centre and offices,' Dr Kline said. 'Nutritional, psychological, social and child-life services will be provided along with comprehensive primary and HIV/AIDS specialty care.'

In addition to the pediatric facilities in southern Africa, other programs developed and operated through Secure The Future grants include:

• model community outreach, education and medical care sites in six countries;

• an HIV/AIDS curriculum that has been adopted by dozens of medical institutions worldwide;

• and a clinical reference laboratory in Botswana.

Secure The Future grants have also funded approximately 50 clinical research and training and education studies and programs, one of which resulted in development of a fast and low-cost CD4-count test for HIV. Other funded programs include:

• clinical trials related to opportunistic infections among HIV-infected patients, such as pneumonia and hepatitis B and C;

• trials in tuberculosis in HIV-infected patients;

• research related to antiretroviral treatment regimens;

• trials related to self-care, nutrition and other non-antiretroviral therapies;

• trials in mother-to-child transmission of HIV;

• a number of training and education programmes, including a bi-directional physician exchange programme between the US and Africa and a nursing education programme;

• and a range of laboratory and psychosocial studies

Secure The Future, a multi-year commitment of more than $115m by Bristol-Myers Squibb and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, is the first and largest corporate initiative of its kind to fight HIV/AIDS.