 Mary
Fisher first visited Zambia a few years ago
because the University of Alabama in
Birmingham — home base of her
Mary Fisher Clinical AIDS Research and
Education (CARE) Fund — supports an
ambitious AIDS-fighting program there:
the Centre for Infectious Disease Research
in Zambia (CIDRZ). Since that first
visit, her heart has drawn her back
repeatedly to the south-central-African
nation, where there's both staggering loss
from HIV/AIDS and heartening progress
against it. In coming months, Ms. Fisher
will spearhead a campaign to upgrade CIDRZ's
Lusaka facilities and expand its life-giving
services.
Though one in six Zambians is
HIV-positive, CIDRZ has had tremendous early
success in the fight against the disease. At
a recent
UNAIDS event in a packed Capitol
Hill hearing room, Ms. Fisher bore witness
to CIDRZ's impact. “In a matter of months,
30,000 previously untested children and
adults in Zambia have been enrolled in care.
They arrived, many of them, curled in
wheelbarrows. On the outskirts of Lusaka, in
Kalingalinga, I witnessed this miracle: A
man with AIDS, who’d arrived skeletal and
hopeless, within weeks was triumphantly
pushing his own wheelbarrow back home… Those
who kissed death now embrace life." |
But
as CIDRZ has pursued miracles, it also has
outgrown facilities. Its operations
currently fill four converted homes and
apartments scattered inconveniently around
Lusaka. To help CIDRZ keep delivering and
expanding its life-giving services, Ms.
Fisher will chair a campaign to build and
fund a single CIDRZ base of operations. The
ZAMBIA FIRST
campaign aims to
bring CIDRZ to scale with the HIV/AIDS
epidemic — that is, to make treatment and
research move as fast as the virus moves.
Once developed, the knowledge and methods
could be applied in Zambia, then across
Africa and the world.