ON THE FRONT LINE OF WAR AGAINST AIDS

When Prof. Michael Alkan received an invitation to join the front lines of the war on AIDS in Africa by setting up clinics in a remote village nestled in the desert plains of Botswana, the response of the professor from the Faculty of Health Sciences was immediate.

"When does the next plane leave?” he asked.

Alkan, a world-renowned expert on AIDS, incumbent of the Werner J. and Charlotte A. Gunzburger Chair for the Study of Infectious Diseases and founder of the Institute for Infectious Diseases at the Soroka University Medical Center, doesn’t let long stretches of time pass without work in the field.” In the past, he has helped set up a medical school in rural Kenya as well as in Ecuador, worked under the most difficult conditions in India, Nepal, and Papua, New Guinea, Thailand and Cambodia and, most recently, was on the ground, providing relief to the tsunami victims in Southeast Asia.

At the Medical School for International Health — a collaboration between the University and the Columbia University Medical Center — he is coordinator of International Health and Medicine
Modules for the first- and second-year students.

But of all of his projects spanning a lifetime of transferring Israeli medical care to citizens of the developing world, he regards his recent mission in Botswana as the most important medical mission of his career. Millions of lives are in the balance.

Alkan was handpicked by the Israeli branch of the pharmaceutical giant Merck, Sharpe and Dohme to join an international team that is working to save Botswana and create a model of treatment that can be replicated across Africa – a continent that is literally dying every moment, More than one-third of the1.6 million citizens of Botswana have HIV — the highest prevalence in the world, due to a tradition of promiscuity that has made attempts at AIDS education almost futile.

A myriad of international bodies have joined the battle. The most significant contribution came from Merck and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, each of which gave $50 million to help health
care personnel in Botswana treat HIV / AIDS using the latest drug cocktail.

It is the first African country that is providing AIDS treatment free of charge to its citizens — a revolutionary move. But Merck realized that merely providing pharmaceuticals — even free of charge — would not be enough. The drugs themselves wouldn’t do any good if clinics weren’t set up to make sure they were administered properly.

So they recruited an international team of doctors — like Alkan — who would be willing to go into the remote parts of Botswana, set up clinics and teach local medical professionals how combat the
spread of AIDS.

For two months, Alkan was based in the town of Ghanzi in the middle of the Kalahari Desert while he set up a clinic and trained its staff. He later returned for another month to the town of Gumare, which is even more remote. “My job was to do more than just teach the local staff the technicalities of AIDS treatment,” he said, “I had to inspire them to convince their countrymen to be tested and to fight the disease.”

Progress has been slow, but definite. According to Alkan, two years ago, only 3,500 Botswanians who were being treated with the AIDS cocktail, now 19 clinics are up and running and treating 33,000 patients. The most important patients are pregnant women, who, by getting treatment, can avoid passing the virus to their unborn children.

(Source: Department of Public Affairs Ben Gurion University)