Mothers, Children, and HIV
SPH faculty combat virus transmission in Zambia
Click on the slide show above to hear Katherine Semrau talk about the Zambia Exclusive Breastfeeding Study and the Southern Province Project.
When Katherine Semrau first touched down in Zambia to conduct HIV research in 2002, most people with AIDS there had no hope of getting antiretroviral therapy.
“Every day on Great North Road, which is the road that cuts through Lusaka, you would see a funeral,” says Semrau, an instructor at the School of Public Health Center for International Health and Development (CIHD). “Funerals there are beat-up pickup trucks with caskets in the back and people sitting around the caskets singing mournful songs. And people were going to funerals five, six, seven times a week because of HIV.”
When she describes long lines in Zambia these days, she is not talking about funerals, but rather about the people waiting at clinics to receive the antiretroviral therapy that is now widely available in the country. But pills alone are not the solution, says Semrau, who believes education and prevention should be part of any HIV/AIDS program.
Semrau travels regularly to the southern African country — where one in five Zambians is infected with HIV — for research work on the virus through CIHD, a Boston University applied research center dedicated to improving child health and survival, measuring the impact of the AIDS epidemic, and building better research capabilities in developing countries.
Semrau worked in the capital city of Lusaka on the Zambia Exclusive Breastfeeding Study, which looked at 1,400 HIV-infected women, some of whom stopped breast feeding their babies abruptly at four months and some of whom exclusively breast-fed for six months. The research seeks to determine whether breast feeding alone is the healthiest option for infants of HIV-infected mothers. Semrau is also involved with the Southern Province Project, which works with the ministry of health in Zambia to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV through voluntary counseling and testing.
Those programs, and other CIHD research projects, are now eligible for funding from Project SEARCH (Supporting Evaluation and Research to Combat HIV/AIDS), awarded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and made possible through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Project SEARCH, whose orders for services could reach $200 million, is designed to improve the coverage, quality, and effectiveness of HIV/AIDS programs in developing and resource-poor countries. The SPH center, along with four other institutions selected by USAID, is eligible to submit proposals for Project SEARCH tasks. Project SEARCH is expected to issue requests for proposals soon and to award funding before the end of September.
Over the next few months, BU Today will take a closer look at several ongoing CIHD projects throughout the world.
Nicole Laskowski can be reached at nicolel@bu.edu.