I had a very pleasant weekend in Kigali and beyond.
One of the places I saw was the Hotel des Milles Collines, which was featured in the film “Hotel Rwanda.”
On Saturday evening, I had a dinner meeting with the leader of the Anglican Church in Rwanda, Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini and several others. Our church in [...]

Today I had a very helpful meeting with Dr. Patrick Kyamanywa, the dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the National University of Rwanda. The med school is in Butare, where I will be in a few days, but he and I met in Kigali.
Patrick is a surgeon, with an active medical practice, who [...]

Today I had the privilege of meeting with several health leaders here in Kigali.
I was introduced to them via my friend, Nathan Thielman, MD, who is a faculty member at Duke Med School. Nathan is an internist who does work in infectious diseases, HIV/AIDS, and global health.
I visited with two Ob/Gyn physicians [...]

Yesterday we had another full day in Trujillo.
In the morning, Doug Morgan, Luis Diaz and I met with the student leaders of the UNT (National University of Trujillo) School of Medicine. In UNC terms, it was like meeting with the leadership of the Whitehead Medical Society, our student association.
They are an obviously bright and [...]

Last evening we left RDU, and flew overnight to Lima, Peru, via Miami.
This is another in a series of trips I have taken in support of UNC’s global health work. In 2007, I went to South Africa and Malawi. And in 2008, I took separate trips to Nicaragua and to China.
This year’s trip [...]

Over the past two days, we had very good meetings with several institutions –

I visited with Dr. Depei Liu, the president of Peking Union Medical College. He is also president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. In U.S. terms, that would be like his being head of one of our top health science centers, and also director of the NIH! We had very wide-ranging conversations about how we might partner, including the possibility of student and faculty exchanges.

This morning we met with Professor Min Weifang, the chairman of the University Council of Peking University. Under the Chinese system of university governance, he is the party chairman, and, as such, he is the highest ranking official at PKU. Even the university president reports to him.

Prof. Min has his doctorate from Stanford, and he is an urbane, polished leader. He has been involved with UNC for some time — and he visited Chapel Hill about a year ago. Chancellor Moeser and he met several times.

He talked about PKU and their vision for the future, especially as it relates to international partnerships with other universities.

Yesterday Peter Coclanis, Tom Martineau and I had lunch with Dr. Yan Jiangying (or Jenny Yan, to use her “English name”).

She is a senior official of the State Food and Drug Administration for China. She is a pediatrician and she was a Fogarty Fellow at UNC with Dr. Gail Henderson in 2005.

We went to a very nice restaurant which has recreated the elegant old style of entertaining. It was a very pleasant meal, made all the more so by Dr. Yan’s recounting of her very positive memories of her year in Chapel Hill.

We had an amazing day on Friday, August 8 –

It began with an early morning meeting at the office and lab of Quintiles here in Beijing.

Quintiles was founded by Dennis Gillings when he was a UNC School of Public Health faculty member. It is now the largest contract research organization in the world, with people and facilities around the globe, and is based in Research Triangle Park, N.C. Dennis and his wife, Joan, have also endowed the UNC School of Public Health and dramatically enhanced the School’s capabilities — especially in global health.