US AIDS Ambassador visits Imperial

Staff and students join open meeting with the US Global AIDS coordinator - News

By Laura Gallagher
Thursday 11 January 2007

Imperial College staff and students met the US Global AIDS coordinator on Tuesday when he visited the College for an open meeting about research into HIV and AIDS.

Ambassador Mark Dybul was at the College to find out about its efforts to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS and to discuss President Bush's 15 billion dollar Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). He asked for the visit after meeting Imperial experts at a World AIDS Day meeting hosted by the College in November 2005.

At yesterday’s meeting, Faculty of Medicine Principal, Professor Stephen Smith , gave an introduction to the Faculty. Professor of Microparasite Epidemiology Geoff Garnett , from the department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, then gave an outline of a few of the many HIV projects underway at Imperial, many of which feed into PEPFAR's work.

These include trials of microbicide creams or gels to prevent the transmission of HIV, research into the prevalence of HIV in different parts of Africa, and research into the most effective strategies for treating HIV including a trial to explore the impact of treating the primary stage of the infection.

Professor Garnett said: "Imperial has a very substantial investment in HIV/AIDS research and we have many collaborations with research organisations around the world. Dramatic changes have occurred in HIV over the last few years, particularly in terms of investments providing treatment with antiretroviral drugs.

"However, we are faced with many challenges in terms of making anti-retroviral treatments practical within the health systems in Africa. We are looking into the interpretation of trends in the global HIV epidemic, the most appropriate diagnostic and treatment patterns when resources are scarce, developing and evaluating new biomedical tools for prevention of infections and evaluating changes in the spread of the virus" he added.

Ambassador Dybul coordinates all U.S. Government HIV/AIDS activities and leads the implementation of PEPFAR, a global initiative that was launched in 2003. Over the course of five years, PEPFAR aims to provide antiretroviral treatment to two million HIV-infected people in places where resources are limited, prevent seven million new infections, and to support care for ten million people.

Ambassador Dybul said that PEPFAR was well on its way to meeting these targets by 2008. He told the meeting, which was attended by experts from Imperial and other research organisations: "PEPFAR is the largest international health initiative in history dedicated to ending disease. We have tried to discard the donor/recipient approach. Mostly what we are trying to do is to transform countries so that they can own their epidemic and fight their epidemic."

He said he was pleased to have the opportunity to address Imperial students, telling those present: "You guys have got to get engaged with this and get involved and solve some of these problems."

The meeting concluded with a discussion of HIV/AIDS issues and PEPFAR by a panel including Ambassador Dybul and experts from Imperial, who addressed questions raised by the audience.

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