A Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigator is hoping to improve access to HIV testing in South Africa, where more than 7 million people are known to have the virus, by training traditional healers to perform the tests.

Delirium, a form of acute brain dysfunction, is widespread in critically ill patients in lower resourced hospitals, and the duration of delirium predicted both mortality and disability at six months after discharge, according to a study published in PLOS ONE.

Six years ago, in Nigeria, funding cutbacks for HIV treatment and the consequent introduction of patient fees were associated with sharp declines in new HIV clinic enrollments and patient adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART).

“I’ve worked in four institutions with a ton of people in a role like hers, and I’ve never encountered anyone even close to her caliber.”

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is attracting international attention for its proposal to repurpose existing drugs for new uses in ways that can dramatically improve access to medicines by billions of people throughout the world.

Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH) has received a new research training grant and a renewal for an existing training program from the Fogarty International Center (FIC) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to build HIV-focused research capacity with key partners in Nigeria and Mozambique.

As South Africans with HIV move around the country, there is a risk they will disengage from the health care system or otherwise become lost to follow-up care.