press releases

U.S. Official Visits Lusaka’s Kanyama Clinic, One Of The Most Successful Hiv/Aids Treatment Sites In Zambia

Lusaka
October 20, 2006

LUSAKA. Ambassador Mark Dybul, the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, on Friday, October 20, visited Lusaka’s Kanyama Clinic, the largest single site providing antiretroviral therapy (ART) in Zambia. With more than 3,400 individuals on ART and nearly 6,000 adults and children enrolled in long-term HIV care and treatment, Kanyama stands as a true success story in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The clinic provides a robust program to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, comprehensive HIV counseling and testing services and active support groups for persons infected with or affected by HIV/AIDS.

In less than five years, the Zambian Ministry of Health and its partners have transformed HIV/AIDS treatment at this clinic. In 2002, the Ministry of Health launched pilot HIV/AIDS care and treatment programs at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka and Ndola Central Hospital. Even though those programs involved some cost sharing by participants, they filled to capacity almost immediately. In May 2004, the Lusaka Urban District began offering HIV care and treatment services free of charge at four clinics, funded by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and implemented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), through the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ). In the following 24 months, the program expanded to 18 additional sites with an ambitious goal: to provide the same medications and monitoring services that the developed world's HIV patients receive, in the resource-limited setting of Lusaka.

As a result of the generous support of the American people, the Lusaka program put more than 16,000 patients on ART within 18 months and used an electronic medical records database to track outcomes. Results show that, among patients on medications 90 days or more, death rates were reduced to comparable levels in the developed world. To date, the program has offered free, high-quality HIV care and treatment to over 60,000 Zambians. The successful scale-up of ART in Zambia was highlighted at the International AIDS Conference Toronto, Canada, in August 2006; it also was featured in a special issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, and covered in The New York Times with the headline “An AIDS Success in Africa.”

Ambassador Dybul identified the Zambian government's leadership and advocacy -- including elimination of patient fees at Lusaka-area clinics -- as one of four key factors in the program's rapid expansion and success. The other key factors were the partnership with PEPFAR; the strict protocols followed by clinical officers and nurses who provided care where physicians were not available; and the electronic tracking of patient data, for use in research as well as care.
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