Accordia Spotlight

Dr. Sabrina Bakeera-Kitaka could have joined the thousands of medical professionals that leave Africa every year. Through an innovative Accordia program, however, she received the financial support, mentorship, and opportunity to make a difference at home. Following a highly competitive process, Dr. Kitaka became an Infectious Disease Fellow in 2003, and is now one of an elite group enrolled in Accordia’s Nelson Sewankambo Clinical Scholars Program.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, 12 million women live with HIV/AIDS. Already challenged by poverty, these women face the stigma of the disease and often have few resources to seek medical attention. A few years ago, Rose Kaweesi, a 40 year old woman living in Kampala, Uganda, thought she was about to die. She lost her husband to AIDS in 1994 and by 1999 she too was sick. “I was getting weaker and weaker. I had a lot of complications – fever, headaches, sores, and so on. Even travelling 20 kilometres in a taxi would make me feel worn out,” she recalls.

Dr. David Meya is one of the promising young Africans enrolled in Accordia’s Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program at the Infectious Diseases Institute in Uganda. Accordia began this program in 2003 to provide an opportunity for young African doctors to specialize in infectious diseases, a critical area where training was lacking. As part of this exciting program, David is now practicing medicine in the area of infectious diseases and learning how to carry out clinical research aimed at improving the lives of his fellow Africans.

While rivaling militias continue to ravage the war-torn region in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the people of DRC are rebuilding their communities. Millions of lives have been lost through starvation and disease, exacerbated by years of war, and resulting in the isolation of the very people most in need of international support. From this crestfallen region, Accordia encountered a symbol of hope: Dr. Mike Upio.

One of the most important ways Accordia Global Health Foundation pursues its mission to overcome the burden of infectious disease in Africa is by nurturing a new generation of specialists to address existing and future global health challenges. Dr. Stephan Schrantz of the University of Chicago was selected in 2006 to participate in the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) International Exchange Fellowship. This program sends North American and European doctors to spend 6 months conducting research at the Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) in Uganda, promoting the development of an international medical education.