By Mina Hosseinipour, MD, MPH Officials announced the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Malawi on April 2, 2020. At UNC Project Malawi, we’d been working for a month to carefully review and prepare for the virus. We established COVID preventive procedures and clinical management guidelines and planning for staff and staff relatives. We … Continued

“Mina sees beyond what I see. She gives me the ‘aha moment,’ and I always ask myself how did I not see that. I keep aiming to do more and be the best in what I do because of her,” Mitch Matoga, MD, PhD, a senior researcher with UNC Project-Malawi, says of his fellowship mentor, … Continued

  The National Institutes of Health has awarded University of North Carolina’s Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases nearly $25 million over seven years to continue operating its Global HIV Clinical Trials Unit, or CTU. The new funding will support HIV treatment and prevention in adults, children and pregnant women at four research sites … Continued

Study led by female investigators enrolled women living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa A long-acting injectable drug, cabotegravir, is safe and more effective than a daily pill in preventing HIV acquisition, according to results from a study of 3,127 cisgender women in sub-Saharan Africa. Led by UNC researchers beginning in November 2017, the study showed … Continued

Six students from Dzama, Malawi — three girls and three boys — have received scholarships to attend private school and receive individual tutoring as the inaugural class of “Charlie Scholars.” The Charlie van der Horst Malawi Scholars Program, administered by UNC Project-Malawi and the UNC Medical Foundation, honors the late UNC infectious diseases physician who … Continued

  A team of researchers led by UNC Project-Malawi has received a one-year, $500,000 grant to build clinical and research capacity in Malawi to better diagnose and treat children with sickle cell disease. The funding is a joint award from the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious … Continued

A team of UNC researchers are partnering with colleagues at four institutions in Africa to study HIV-associated malignancies. With a five-year, $6 million grant from the NIH’s National Cancer Institute, the research consortium will look at screening and diagnosing innovations for three cancers common to people with HIV: Kaposi sarcoma, cervical cancer and lymphoma. Leading … Continued

Our dear friend, Dr. Peter Kazembe, a Malawian colleague, pediatrician and adjunct professor of medicine with the University of North Carolina’s Institute for Global Health and Infection Diseases, died on August 11, 2020 at the age of 65 while receiving treatment for cancer in South Africa. He is survived by his wife, Hilda, and three … Continued

Irving Hoffman, international director of the Institute’s UNC Project-Malawi, offers this report as the country recorded its first death from COVID-19. As of April 8, 2020, despite limited testing, Malawi has recorded 10 COVID-19 cases with one death and some evidence of community spread. UNC Project-Malawi is taking a leading role in support of the … Continued

Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe, Malawi, celebrated the opening of its pediatric laboratory with a November 14, 2019 ceremony. The collaborative project was led by Elizabeth Fitzgerald, MD, a pediatric emergency medicine specialist, with support from UNC Project-Malawi and funding from the Malawi Children’s Initiative. Rob Krysiak, MS, co-director of the UNC Project Malawi laboratory, … Continued

Researchers at UNC Project-Malawi published 124 articles in scientific journals in 2018, setting a record for UNC Institute for Global Health’s global sites.  Twenty-six of the manuscripts featured Malawian first authors. “Our unit celebrates every publication manuscript coming from UNC Project-Malawi, especially those featuring a Malawian first author,” says Maga Chagomerana, PhD, the project’s director … Continued