Beyond reducing transmission between mothers and children, the project ultimately aims to cut the number of new infections to the point below the number that would be needed to maintain the epidemic permanently, Essex said.
In the short term, the program hopes to raise awareness about the infection and increase access to the necessary drugs.
“It’s probably reasonable to say that in more developed countries, HIV/AIDS can be treated now as a chronic infection like hypertension and diabetes so that people don’t have to die from it,” Essex said. “But obviously that’s not the case in much of Africa because it’s dependent on having drug options available. Our immediate goal is to try to get everyone onto the cause so that they can live normal lives and not die from their infections.”
Essex predicted that success in this aim would occur in Botswana before other sub-Saharan African nations, largely because of its cooperative and forward-thinking government.
Nonetheless, Essex said that the research is far from complete.
“We’ve not yet done everything we need to do...to make that level of progress [to reduce] sexual infections in adults,” he said. “We didn’t know how to do it until recently, but now we do. We need to start implementing trials to put the strategy into action.”
LOOKING BACK
Both Essex and Marlink emphasized that the Harvard-Botswana Partnership is as much about educational enrichment as it is about researching solutions to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Botswana. They lauded the project’s ability to provide students with three key firsthand experiences: working in a laboratory setting, living in a developing country, and tackling a problem with significant real world implications.
“We work a lot on education of AIDS experts who live in the country and, of course, some education of Harvard students at all levels,” Essex said. “We have undergraduates who go to Botswana for summers or several months for a semester, doctoral students who go there for a year, and postdoctoral fellows who are there even longer.”
Students involved with the partnership shared positive memories from their time in Botswana.
“It was such a unique experience because Harvard has such a presence there,” said Kelsey H. Natsuhara ’13.
Natsuhara also recalled the motivation of the staff, almost all of whom were Botswanans with a personal connection to the disease because of its consequences on their family and friends.
“I think that working at BHP was one of the most formative experiences I’ve ever had, both from an intellectual standpoint and in terms of personal growth,” said Natsuhara.
“I learned a lot in terms of the science, kind of from a research standpoint, but also about how an epidemic like this can affect so many people and how a country can rally together in the face of such an obstacle.”
Marlink said that the Harvard name and its reputation as a world-class educational institution has augmented the partnership’s success.
“I’ve found in my experience that the farther away you get from Boston, the more people respect and know [Harvard]. That recognition and trust is what helps us create projects like this,” he said. “We ensure the government they can trust us and that we won’t leave their citizens. We are more like a family and we work together.”
—Staff writer Pooja Podugu can be reached at podugu@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @PoojaPodugu.