Government, Corporate, Academic Partnership Opens Pediatric HIV/AIDS Health Center in Botswana

The Botswana-Baylor College of Medicine Children's Clinical Center of Excellence at Princess Marina Hospital opened on Friday in Gaborone, Botswana, according to a Bristol-Myers Squibb release. The project is a partnership among BMS, Houston-based Baylor College of Medicine's International Pediatrics AIDS Initiative and the Republic of Botswana (BMS release, 6/19). The center houses a large outpatient clinic, pharmacy, laboratory, medical library, conference center and offices and will provide nutritional, psychological, social and child life services along with comprehensive primary and specialty care for infants and children who are HIV-positive or who have been orphaned by the epidemic. The center will be staffed jointly with health care workers from both Botswana and Baylor College of Medicine. "It's a perfect partnership," Dr. Mark Kline, director of the Baylor International Pediatrics AIDS Initiative and chief of retrovirology at Texas Children's Hospital, said, adding, "We are able to work side-by-side in tackling one of Africa's most serious health issues" (Baylor release, 6/20). The project is being supported with nearly $10 million in funding from BMS as part of the company's Secure the Future initiative, a five-year program that will provide nearly $115 million in grants to South and West African countries to fight HIV/AIDS. Kline said that he hopes the center will one day "serve as a model for a network of centers where African and American physicians and scientists can work together and develop best clinical practices" (BMS release, 6/19).