Project SIDA (1984–1991), or Projet SIDA ("Project AIDS" in French), was a joint scientific project between Zaire, the United States, and Belgium to study AIDS in Central Africa. Headquartered in Kinshasa, Zaire (DRC), Projet SIDA was designed as a collaboration between foreign scientists with experience studying epidemics and local scientists and physicians familiar with the local culture and customs. Initiated in 1984, Project SIDA began under the direction of Jonathan Mann with funding from the U.S. and Belgium, as well as support from the Zairian government. Project SIDA was based at Mama Yemo (Kinshasa General) hospital in Kinshasa. Early on, Projet SIDA researchers confirmed the presence of AIDS outside of the United States through laboratory testing of blood samples collected by Bila Kapita. Unlike in the United States, where most identified AIDS cases were male, Projet SIDA identified an equal number of male and female AIDS patients at Mama Yemo. Thus, the project was one of the first to establish the heterosexual transmission of AIDS. Project SIDA was terminated in 1991 due to civil war in Zaire.
Background Dr. Bila Kapita was the first to notice the beginnings of the AIDS epidemic in Zaire. At the time, AIDS was associated almost exclusively with male populations in Europe and North America. In the 1970s a condition referred to as "slim" or "wasting disease" appeared in Central and Eastern Africa. In 1975 Kapita, a cardiologist and at that time the head of internal medicine at Mama Yemo, observed an increased number of these patients with Kaposi's sarcoma, a rare type of tumor linked to AIDS. Meanwhile, doctors in the U.S. and in Western Europe began to notice heterosexual patients with similar travel histories to and from Central Africa suffering from Pneumocystis carinii, a type of pneumonia also found in homosexual North American AIDS patients. Thomas Quinn of National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, Joseph McCormick of the Centers for Disease Control, and Peter Piot of the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp went on a fact-finding mission Kinshasa in the summer of 1983 at the request of Kalisa Ruti, the Zaire Minister of Health In Kinshasa, Kapita introduced Quinn, McCormick, and Piot to 38 patients in Kinshasa and provided samples he had collected of their blood. Many of these patients displayed cryptococcal meningitis, which is often linked to AIDS. Kaptita, McCormick, and Piot, as well as Sheila Mitchell of the CDC, identified the loss of T cells in Kapita's patients. The initial 1983 work done in Mama Yemo, along with research done by Belgian physician Nathan Clumeck in Kigali, Rwanda and cell counts of blood collected in Rwanda by the Pasteur Institute, established the connection between North American AIDS and the disease present in Central Africa.
Project Initiators In 1983 Piot and Quinn were in talks to create a joint project between the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) in Antwerp, Belgium, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Washington, D.C., and Mama Yemo. Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe of the University of Kinshasa also joined the project upon the condition that the university would receive funding and a number of guaranteed publications from the research. Because the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia was planning an AIDS research project at the same time, the US government merged the NIAID and CDC plans. In March 1984, James Curran, director of the CDC AIDS program, brought CDC epidemiologist Jonathan Mann on as Projet SIDA's first director. Mann arrived in Kinshasa in June, 1984. On August 29, 1984, Projet SIDA officially opened its lab offices at Mama Yemo Hospital with an official ceremony including Zairian animateurs. Two teams operated out of Kinshasa: a clinical staff and immunological lab. Clinical research was conducted with the support of the ITM and included a lab headed by Flemish epidemiologist Frieda Behets, and Zairian epidemiologists Bosenge Ngali and Eugene Nzila Nzilambi. Robert "Bob" Colebunders also came to provide support for Kapita's primary care services at Mama Yemo. NIAID epidemiologist Henry "Skip" Francis arrived in September 1984 to set up labs at Mama Yemo. Francis's team included Kalisa Ruti and focused primarily on virological and immunological studies of the serum of Kapita's collected blood samples.
Funding and Support At Project SIDA's conception, the CDC contributed $2.5 million, NIAID $1 million, and $.5 million from the Institute of Tropical Medicine. Project SIDA initially employed 7 staff members, but later contained more than 300 physicians, researchers, and assistants only seven of whom were expatriates. Funding provided research materials, such as twenty Landcruisers and equipment for running blood tests, as well as funding for Zairian researchers to pursue degrees in the U.S. and Europe. Project SIDA began operating with $300,000 per year, reaching a peak annual budget of $4 million before the US pulled funding in 1991.
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