Johns Hopkins to Open AIDS Resource Center in Ethiopia

The Ethiopia AIDS Resource Center is being established in Ethiopia by The Johns Hopkins University (JHU, Baltimore, MD, USA), under a US$300,000 cooperative agreement with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, Atlanta, GA, USA). Ethiopia has one of the world's highest rates of HIV infection.

The center is to be located in the capital city, Addis Ababa, and will provide health-care workers, government officials, and AIDS organizations with the latest information and materials on AIDS. The center will support a local AIDS telephone hotline that provides information and counseling services. According to the CDC, Ethiopia has only 1% of the world's population but 9% of the worldwide cases of AIDS. More than a million people have died due to AIDS, and the disease has orphaned more than 700,000 Ethiopian children. The CDC assists other countries in developing, implementing, and evaluating AIDS prevention, care, and treatment programs.

"Ethiopia has been devastated by the AIDS epidemic and there's a crying need for accurate and accessible information,” said Tadesse Wuhib, M.D., director for CDC-Ethiopia. "Right now, there's a severely limited supply of quality materials and current knowledge available for those trying to stop this disease.”





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