U.S. Group Funds AIDS, TB Research Center in South Africa

On Thursday, the Maryland-based Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) announced it is funding an HIV/AIDS and TB research center in the South African province at the epicenter of a pandemic of the two diseases. The $60 million center will be housed at KwaZulu-Natal University's Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in Durban.

Forty percent of adults in KwaZulu-Natal are infected with HIV, and eight in 10 adults in the province who have TB also have HIV. The province is the site of a town where researchers in 2005 discovered what they termed "the lethal convergence" of HIV and drug-resistant TB. At a hospital in Tugela Ferry, all 44 people diagnosed with extensively drug-resistant TB were co-infected with HIV. All but one of the patients died.

Locating a research facility at the heart of the HIV and TB co-epidemic will allow scientists to work with "higher quality data because we are able to use samples in the lab after drawing them freshly," explained Bruce Walker, an investigator at HHMI.

"The KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV (K-RITH) will be an international center of excellence for research but also for training a whole new generation of scientific leaders in Africa," added HHMI's Tom Cech.

Kenya native Thumbi Ndung'u said K-RITH will provide African scientists the opportunity to remain in Africa instead of having to go abroad for research jobs. The center "will make it possible for African scientists to be trained on the African continent, to engage with the communities, which is key to beating the HIV and TB epidemics," he said. Ndung'u studied at Harvard University and although he was offered jobs in the United States and Europe, he elected to return to Africa.

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