According to UNAIDS, half the current population of teen-agers in the hardest-hit countries in Africa are expected to die of AIDS. Why are effective treatments inaccessible? How can access to care be improved in resource-poor countries? A distinguished international panel joins us live from the XIII International AIDS Conference for this special audiocast.

Richard Marlink, MD, principal investigator for the Enhancing Care Initiative, is executive director of HAI and senior research director in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health. Marlink's early research efforts involved collaborative trials of new anticancer agents, followed by similar trials for antivirals used against HIV infection. Following his participation on the team that first identified HIV-2, the second AIDS virus, Marlink became involved in laboratory research at the Harvard School of Public Health and in epidemiologic and clinical studies in Senegal, West Africa. In addition, in Senegal he helped coordinate studies to determine the clinical and biologic characteristics of both HIV-1 and HIV-2.


Souleymane Mboup, PhD, leader of the Enhancing Care Initiative's Senegalese AIDS Care Team, currently holds the titles of professor/chief of the Bacteriology/Virology Laboratory at the University of Dakar and of Pharmacien Commandant at the Health Military School of Dakar. Mboup serves as the Senegalese coordinator for the Inter-University Convention (Dakar-Tours-Limoges-Harvard) for Research on Human Viruses and Related Diseases. He is the president of the Senegalese Committee for AIDS Prevention and serves as a consultant on AIDS to the World Health Organization. He is the author of more than 70 research articles.

Jose Ricardo Ayres, MD, PhD, leader of the Enhancing Care Initiative's Brazilian AIDS Care Team, is an assistant professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of Sao Paulo Medical School. In addition, he coordinates the Adolescent Health Care Program of the Centro de Saude Escola Samuel B. Pessoa, an educational center for primary health care supported by the Department of Preventive Medicine. He also serves as a consultant to the State STD/AIDS Prevention Program and to the State Education Secretariat, as an advisor for the biggest Brazilian program on HIV and AIDS prevention among young people in school settings.

Antonia Mtinjana, co-leader of the Enhancing Care Initiative's South African AIDS Care Team, is the assistant director for the Provincial AIDS Action Unit in the Province of KwaZulu-Natal. She is portfolio manager for the Department of Social Welfare, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Local Government and Housing, as well as the Department of Home Affairs. In her position at the newly opened Provincial AIDS Action Unit, which is a KwaZulu-Natal Cabinet initiative, she is responsible for facilitating the establishment of HIV/AIDS programs among departments. Mtinjana is currently involved in planning the community program section for the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa.

Representing the largest concentration of AIDS researchers nationally, HAI is a premier nongovernmental organization dedicated to promoting research to curb the HIV epidemic and to helping those most affected by the epidemic nationally and internationally.