NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH, BETHESDA, MARYLAND - The Fogarty International Center (FIC) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a total of $15 million to fund six new awards, three competing renewal awards, and 32 competing supplements to U.S. universities under the fourth funding cycle of the FIC AIDS International Training and Research Program (AITRP). As the international training arm of NIHs HIV research effort, AITRP trains developing country scientists to address the AIDS epidemic primarily through prevention research, combining biomedical and behavioral interventions.

AITRP supports U.S. grantees and their colleagues in Africa, Latin America, the Far East, Russia, and the New Independent States of the Former Soviet Union to build global HIV/AIDS research capacity and to help prevent HIV transmission. The program funds research and training programs for health scientists, clinicians, and allied health workers in parts of the developing world and newly emerging democracies severely impacted by the AIDS epidemic.

"We must prepare current and future generations of international scientists to work interdependently to meet global health needs," says FIC Director Gerald T. Keusch, M.D. "FICs AITRP is part of the NIH major effort to do so. First funded in 1988, AITRP is now the most extensive HIV research and training network among U.S. schools of medicine and public health and counterparts in developing nations."

Key areas of emphasis to date include intervention research designed to prevent HIV transmission among adults, as well as from mothers to childre
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Contact: Irene Edwards
ie3m@nih.gov
301-496-2075
NIH/Fogarty International Center
22-Oct-2000