Infectious diseases in Africa examined in special lecture

Professors Michel Kazatchkine and Sir Roy Anderson deliver the 2007 GE Healthcare Lecture - News

By Laura Gallagher
Thursday 20 December 2007

The fight against infectious diseases in Africa was under the spotlight on 12 December 2007 when two eminent figures in the field presented the annual GE Healthcare Lecture at Imperial College.

Professor Michel Kazatchkine, who is the Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and Professor Sir Roy Anderson, from the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, addressed the question "What can medical technology contribute to the attainment of the Millenium Goals in Africa?" for the special lecture.

Introducing the Professors to the audience, Sir Richard Sykes, Rector of Imperial College, said: "Both have dedicated their careers to understanding and controlling the infectious diseases that are blighting millions of lives worldwide, and which are taking a terrible toll in Africa in particular."

Professor Kazatchkine has been part of the fight against HIV and AIDS for over twenty years, as a physician, researcher and policymaker. In 1983 he treated a couple recently returned from Africa who were suffering from unexplained severe immune deficiency and this chance encounter led him to open an AIDS clinic in 1985. In 1988 he founded the first night clinic for HIV patients, offering confidential treatment outside of normal working hours.

Since then Professor Kazatchkine has been director of the French National Agency for Research on AIDS, and France's Ambassador for HIV/AIDS and communicable diseases. He is also Professor of Immunology at Universite Rene Descartes and Head of Immunology at the Georges Pompidou Hospital.

Professor Kazatchkine told the audience: "We've made tremendous progress in the last five years and this has happened somehow in the absence of any big technological innovation."

"What we're looking at is now there is a real possibility of stemming the death toll in Africa and the developing world," he added.

Professor Kazatchkine pointed out that research in the developing world was now leading some of the advances in the fight against HIV/AIDs. For example, a new regimen of treatment using just one pill that was introduced in the developing world over two years ago is only now being introduced in the West.

"It's the research in the South and the innovation in the South that is actually feeding progress in the North, paradoxically," he said.

A talk by Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology Sir Roy Anderson, the future Rector of Imperial College, followed Professor Kazatchkine's talk. Professor Anderson is a leading authority on the spread and control of infectious diseases including tropical parasitic infections, BSE and CJD, HIV, influenza and foot and mouth. He recently completed a three year secondment from Imperial to be Chief Scientific Advisor to the Ministry of Defence, where he led the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology.

Professor Anderson is also Chair of the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative at Imperial. Schistosomiasis is a tropical disease which causes chronic ill-health in over 200 million people across sub-Saharan Africa. The Initiative, which has so far delivered over 43 million treatments for schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminths in Africa, was recognised last month with a prestigious Queen's Anniversary Prize.

Professor Anderson said: "Infectious diseases dominate totally today in Africa, with the big three - malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS - hugely important, but the neglected ones very important too."

Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases is the sixth of eight Millenium Development Goals from the United Nations, alongside goals to "eradicate extreme poverty and hunger" and "achieve universal primary education."

Funders are beginning to recognise that this sixth goal is one which can more easily be tackled than some of the others, explained Professor Anderson. "They are down the bottom of the list of priorities at the moment but rising in donors' minds as something which is almost like low-hanging fruit – it's something you can deal with quickly if you have the will," he said.

Watch this and other lectures online at Online Lectures