Global Approach: Reaching Countries Desperate for Solutions

John Bartlett, M.D., and Joel Gallant, M.D., know the misery of AIDS in the developing world in exquisite detail. The urgent queries of patients and overwhelmed clinicians in 82 countries pour into the Hopkins AIDS Service Website that the two infectious disease specialists set up—some 2 million hits each month. “The questions we get show great gaps in knowledge,” says Gallant, who directs the service.

Since early in the epidemic, Bartlett and Gallant have led efforts to upgrade AIDS care and research worldwide. Bartlett, who heads the Division of Infectious Diseases at Hopkins, posts the latest findings from more than 40 medical journals on the site each month. “In Kinshasa, they’re not subscribing to the journal AIDS,” Gallant says, “but they are surfing the Web.”

Now the Center for Clinical Global Health Education will magnify Bartlett’s and Gallant’s power to help. The two experts’ online courses on AIDS and its treatment will reach countries desperate for solutions. And, on the same computers CCGHE provides, health care workers in the world’s poorest corners will virtually “attend” important scientific meetings like the annual AIDS conference. To jump-start the Center’s training programs as well as share up-to-the-minute research findings, Gallant, Bartlett and teams of Hopkins nurses, clinicians and scientists will regularly travel to India, Africa, Thailand, Brazil and the Middle East.

“The need is real,” Bartlett says. “Our efforts to deal with AIDS on a global level have just begun. But if we’re persistent, these advances will benefit everyone, not just the lucky ones.”