The objective of this R03 grant under United States NIH CIPRA Program is to coordinate the existing effort in HIV research and public health in Congo-Brazzaville so that limited resource will be spent to achieve the best possible outcome in reducing or even stopping the HIV transmission in our country. HIV/AIDS is now the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa. In Republic of Congo, the prevalence of HIV infection among sexual active population in 2000 was about 8% to 11% which is probably underestimated. For HIV infected women in our country, mother to child transmission is between 30 to 40% with high morbidity and mortality in perinatal period. In this application, the general outlines of our planned work are listed. Then we propose who will be responsible for such activities, and how we are going to organize various activities under these leaders to plan and prepare for a formal application to develop an integrated HIV/AIDS program in Congo. Our program will promote the international collaboration between HIV researchers in Congo and several groups of HIV scientists in developed countries. For the public health activities, we identified three areas. 1) HIV counseling and testing with a focus to young women. 2) Safety of Blood Transfusion Program (HIV, HBV and HCV screening). 3) Prevention and treatment of opportunistic infections among HIV-infected patients. For the HIV research activities, focused basic and applicable research projects will be started in two areas: 1) surveillance of HIV -1 subtypes diversity including the identification of new divergent HIV/SlV strains in Congo, and 2) establishment of research core facilities which can learn and adopt important immunology and virology assays from the developed countries. Under this R03 grant support, assigned leaders in each of the above areas will organize a small group of HIV/ AIDS workers, both clinicians and basic researchers, to develop a practical plan for each of the proposed area of HIV / AIDS research. Challenges and potential opportunities will be analyzed. Based on such initial planning, a final U01 grant application will be prepared to establish an integrated HIV / AIDS research program in Congo. Even though the work included in this program is limited, they will become useful models for people in our country to see the future of fighting against AIDS epidemic.
