Walking Together, Walking Far: How a U.S. and African Medical School Partnership Is Winning the Fight Against HIV/AIDS

A remarkable partnership between the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Moi University School of Medicine in Kenya has built one of the most comprehensive and successful programs in the world to control HIV/AIDS. Calling upon the resources of the Americans, the ingenuity of the Kenyans, and their shared determination to care for patients who had been given up for dead, the program has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and described as a miracle by the U.S. ambassador to Kenya. Doctors from Kenya and the United States -- employing methods once considered unfeasible, such as successfully administered antiretroviral regimes -- have created a model program for saving lives and empowering the sick and impoverished. Against formidable odds, these partners demonstrate how medicine and caring can overturn preconceived notions about Africa and help wipe out the world's most devastating pandemic.

Fran Quigley is Director of Operations and Development for the IU–Kenya Partnership at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. He is a lawyer and contributing columnist for the Indianapolis Star and other publications. He lives in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Paul Farmer is the Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a founding director of Partners In Health. Farmer has written extensively about health, human rights, and the role of social inequalities in the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases. His work is the subject of Tracy Kidder's book Mountains Beyond Mountains.