Funded Programs

Zambia-Emory Research Initiative in Tuberculosis and TB/HIV

The Emory University School of Medicine, the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia, and the University of Zambia School of Medicine are partnering to develop a research program whose purpose is to improve global control of tuberculosis (TB) with a special emphasis on the control of TB in the HIV-positive population. The program’s specific objectives are to:

• Develop an infrastructure and program in Zambia to conduct high quality and internationally significant TB and TB/HIV research that will become self sustaining through external funding;
• Facilitate TB/HIV integration of care;
• Enhance collaborative opportunities between Zambian and Emory investigators and trainees for clinical and translational research and research training in TB and TB/HIV; and
• Investigate the utility of a new generation of diagnostic tests for latent TB infection called interferon-γ release assays among HIV-infected persons.

This Zambia-Emory Research Initiative in TB and TB/HIV builds upon the infrastructure established by the Zambian-Emory HIV Research Program, which was established in 1994, and the NIH Fogarty International Center (FIC)-funded Emory AIDS International Research and Training Program grant, which includes Zambia. Important outcomes of this research initiative include: an external application for a longitudinal study of a new generation of diagnostic TB tests; an application to the NIH FIC for a TB Global Infectious Diseases grant to fund research training for Zambian physicians and scientists; a joint Zambian-Emory application to the CDC for renewal of a current CDC-funded TB Trials Consortium that will require international sites; and the establishment of Zambia as a site for TB vaccine trials when phase III trails are initiated in the next few years.

For more information, contact:
Henry M. Blumberg, MD
Professor
Emory University School of Medicine
henry.m.blumberg@emory.edu