Common Therapies against AIDS

The University of Frankfurt am Main and the Kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa are many thousands of kilometres apart. Yet despite this great distance, they share a special German-African partnership with a common goal: to improve therapy and medical care for HIV/AIDS patients in Lesotho.

Enlarge image (© picture-alliance/ dpa) Frankfurt, University Hospital: the Centre for Internal Medicine is home to the clinic’s HIV Centre, the biggest centre for treating people with HIV and AIDS in Germany. Professor Schlomo Staszewski and his team of physicians and nurses have treated over 8,000 patients here since the HIV Centre was set up in 1985.

Professor Staszewski is one of the most-prominent German scientists in AIDS research, and the first professorship specifically for HIV therapies and clinical management in Germany was set up for him in 2003. Yet effective drugs against HIV, with its 40 million sufferers worldwide, are not available everywhere; knowledge of therapies, too, is not always very widespread internationally. 

The Frankfurt HIV Centre therefore passes on its many years of experience to others – for example, in Lesotho. The collaboration with the Karabong Clinic has been ongoing since 2003. The HIV Centre is supported by Lesotho’s first lady, Mathato Mosisili. She is the patron of national HIV programmes and has also visited the HIV Centre in Germany in this capacity. About 25% of the Kingdom of Lesotho’s approximately 1.8 million inhabitants are infected with HIV – one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in Africa. However, the government is determined to fight AIDS.
Enlarge image HIV-positive AIDS orphans receive medicine (© picture-alliance/ dpa)

By exchanging knowledge, members of staff and research projects, the HIV Centre and the Karabong Clinic are seeking to improve the medical treatment of AIDS patients and to build up independent HIV research facilities in Lesotho. 

One element of their cooperation is a three-month training course in Frankfurt. The first team to take part, made up of a physician, a nurse, a pharmacist, a laboratory technician and a social worker, were given lectures and attended workshops on HIV therapy, clinical studies and the treatment of pregnant women and children; they also visited self-help groups, pharmaceutical companies and prevention organizations. 

“We showed the team how HIV is treated here. It was important for us that our partners from Africa should decide for themselves what elements of HIV treatment in Germany they also adopt at their clinic,” says Dr. Tessa Lennemann, a junior physician at the HIV Centre who developed the course and runs the partnership with Africa.

Back in Lesotho, the collaboration quickly showed its first signs of success. The Karabong Clinic, which is run by head physician Piet McPherson, now supplies over 1,800 patients with special drugs and has developed into an HIV therapy centre for the region. “The hospital offers excellent treatment, and the team are motivated and very patient-focused in their work,” says Dr. Lennemann. 

She had been impressed by the good work the partner clinic was doing during a visit of a delegation from the HIV Centre with Professor Schlomo Staszewski in early 2006. The main purpose of this journey to Lesotho and South Africa, which was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG), was to build up a joint research programme. 

Together with other partners, such as the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, this initiative aimed to ensure the long-term success of HIV therapy in Lesotho.

www.hivcenter.de