About ZEHRP

I realized that some of you may be wondering about my sudden move to Zambia, or perhaps why the organization for which I work has projects in Rwanda and Zambia, of all countries.

As I've mentioned previously (see 'About RZHRG and PSF' posted in September 2007), Projet San Francisco (PSF), where I was working in Kigali, Rwanda, was founded in 1986. Its sister project in Lusaka, Zambia, was later established in 1994, when Dr. Allen, the founder of the organization, and many of her staff fled to Zambia for safety during the Rwandan genocide. Rather than give up their work, those who made it to Zambia established a sister project here that is now known as the Zambia Emory HIV Research Group (ZEHRP).

Since 1994, the project has offered couples' voluntary counseling and testing (CVCT) services to over 20,000 couples in Lusaka. Among these 20,000 couples, over 13,000 HIV-infections have been diagnosed and 6,000 syphilis infections have been treated. Like PSF, ZERHP has couples' voluntary counseling and testing facilities, two medical clinics, laboratories and a pharmacy. The project employs around 150 Zambian medical and support staff and 5 to 10 expatriate staff.

The most recent news for ZEHRP was the awarding of a large grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to expand CVCT services to a greater number of clinics in Lusaka and throughout the southern province of Zambia. With this grant, CVCT services have expanded over the last couple months from three fixed sites in Lusaka to more than twelve district health centers and other sites in the region. As exciting as this expansion has been and as many people as are benefiting from the new CVCT services, it's created lots and lots of work for ZEHRP staff, which is the reason I've come down here from Kigali for a couple months. Hopefully I'll be able to help set up and organize some of the systems for this expansion and will then be able to return to Kigali to help do the same as we look forward to expansion there as well.