Greetings from the UNC Project at the Tidziwe Center in Lilongwe, Malawi. This morning I and others from the UNC Project had a meeting with the Minister of Health for Malawi, the Hon. Marjorie Ngaunje. She is a member of Parliament, and has relatively recently come to this cabinet position. We talked about the UNC [...]

Greetings from the UNC Project in Lilongwe, Malawi! This morning we drove the 180 miles from Blantyre to Lilongwe, which is the capital of the country. Here on the grounds of Kamuzu Central Hospital, the UNC Project has its headquarters in the Tidziwe Center, a building built in 2003, to house the various UNC-led research, [...]

I spent today at the Malawi College of Medicine, seeing lots of interesting and impressive things. My host was Dr. George Kafulafula, the vice-principal of the COM. The principal, who is analogous to a U.S. dean, was out of town. George is an Ob-Gyn, and former head of that department here. His principal research interest [...]

It is late afternoon on Sunday, May 27. Yesterday we flew from Jo’burg to Blantyre, Malawi. We were met at the airport by Irving Hoffman from UNC. Irving has worked in Malawi for 15 years, and is spending the summer here this year. Malawi is a much different country than South Africa. In contrast to [...]

Last evening we had a most pleasant dinner with UNC’s colleagues in South Africa. Charlie van der Horst has built a large number of very substantial collaborations here over the past five years. I visited at length with Professor Helen Laburn, the dean of the faculty of health sciences at Wits University, and with Dr. [...]

I arrived here this morning, overnight from Europe. I was met by Charlie van der Horst, who is one of UNC’s leaders in infecious diseases and, especially, HIV/AIDS. He has been working extensively with colleagues in Malawi and South Africa for the past five years. See this link for more information about our work there.

I am in Brussels, and leave for South Africa this evening. This is a trip for me to learn first hand what UNC is doing in Africa focused on South Africa and Malawi. It is important to understand why we are involved there and, as is the case for all of global health we do [...]

UNC's Center for HIV/STDs and Infectious Disease is comprised of a dedicated group of scientists. A significant portion of their research takes place overseas in China, India, Thailand, Russia, Haiti and several countries in Africa, including Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo, Malawi, Madagascar and South Africa. Their work is designed to make discoveries in HIV/AIDS, STDs, tuberculosis, [...]

In commemoration of the CDC's 60th anniversary, one of its publications, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) is changing up their usual report format and has invited former CDC directors, like myself, to give their own point of view on key public health achievements and challenges that occurred during their tenures. I also serve [...]

As you may know, UNC Health Care has undertaken an initiative to improve access for patients who face financial difficulties. We began this effort in response to concerns raised by the community about how we meet the needs of our patients. Some of the underlying issues we addressed result from the irrational and sometimes immoral [...]