How we started in Malawi
In 1990, the University of North Carolina (UNC) Division of Infection Disease and its chief, Professor Myron Cohen, signed a contract with USAID through Family Health International (FHI) to provide technical assistance to ministries of health around the world in the area of sexually transmitted disease (STD) control, including HIV. Malawi was at that time one of seventeen countries on the UNC list of countries that requested assistance.
In 1991, Frieda Behets, who later became a professor of epidemiology at the UNC School of Public Health, and Professor Godfrey Lule from Malawi College of Medicine (COM) began a study at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) to determine the prevalence and etiologies of urethritis and genital ulcer diseases to inform the development of STD treatment guidelines in Malawi.
Michael Chizombe, the current head of stores at the UNC Project in Lilongwe was the clinic aide during these studies, and Ruben Mwenda, the current head of laboratory services at the MOH, was the microbiologist.
In 1992, Irving Hoffman, who later became a professor of Medicine at UNC and UNC Project international director, traveled to Malawi for the first time and completed these studies. From 1992 -1995, Family Health International (FHI) Malawi employee David Chilongozi CO, MPH (who in 2000 would be hired by UNC Project as our research coordinator) and Celine Costello Dailey, MD worked with Hoffman at QECH to develop the STD algorithms for women with vaginal discharge and lower abdominal pain.
In 1996, Hoffman and Cohen received a small WHO grant to study HIV viral load in semen before and after treatment in men co-infected with HIV and cute urethritis. This study was approved by the Malawi Institutional Review Board (IRB) but the leadership of QECH did not allow its implementation because of the study’s requirement to collect semen. However, Dr. Peter Kazembe who was at the time the chair of IRB and the director of Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) in Lilongwe recommended that the study take place at KCH.
In 1997, this study was conducted at KCH with Hoffman, Martin Maida MO, and Dick Zimba CO as the clinician investigators. Topia Banda was laboratory technician while Eniffa Nkata was the study nurse and HIV counselor. Following this study, Nkata and Banda were retained by the UNC Project and became the first permanent employees of the Project.
In 1998, the UNC Project in collaboration with John Hopkins University and the College of Medicine in Blantyre received our first National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant as part of the Division of AIDS (DAIDS) Prevention Trials Network. This grant provided us with the infrastructure resources we required to develop a fully realized research, training, and care site. Although our research activities were exclusively held in the KCH STI clinic, we began to investigate not only the traditional STI and their relationship to HIV but also the use of vaginal microbicides. Since our primary resource was from the DAIDS HIVNET grant, the Project was then informally known as the UNC HIVNET Project.
In 1998, our first administrative offices were on the second floor of the Dulux Paints Building on Mandala Road, Lilongwe Old Town, Catherine Hoyo Ph.D. was hired as country director and worked closely with Hoffman and Kazembe to set up the administrative infrastructure that we know today as UNC Project.
In 1999, Hoyo was replaced by Francis Martinson MD, PhD. In 2000 the project was renamed UNC Project to encompass other activities that were not sponsored by HIVNET. With our portfolio of activities and staff number of growing, our administrative offices moved to the second floor of the Amina House on Chilambula Road. At the time of moving our staff, strength had grown from the initial six employees to 32. However, that number would quickly grow as UNC Project research activities expanded further to Bwaila (Bottom) Hospital.
In August 2001, Mina Hosseinipour joined the UNC Project staff as an Infectious Diseases Fellow. She then became a senior investigator. Prof. Mina Hosseinipour is now our scientific director. In March 2002, Arthur Sungitsa joined the UNC Project as Finance and Administrative Manager. With the ever-increasing workload in May 2005, the project decided to separate the position of finance from administration. Sungitsa remained as Finance Manager while Innocent Mofolo joined in 2005 as Administration Manager.
From 2002 to 2003, Martinson and Hoffman with Michael Luanda as architect, Peter Roberts of Eugene, Oregon as facilities developer, and Rob Krysiak, Marcia Hobbs, and Susan Fiscus as laboratory consultant, designed and built the 17,000 sq. ft. Tidziwe Centre, the permanent home of UNC Project on the campus of KCH. The staff moved into this facility on 14 August 2003. Since then, UNC Project has built a 6,000 sq. ft. BAN ( Breastfeeding, Antiretroviral and Nutrition) building at Bwaila Hospital and a 7,500 sq. ft. George Joaki (Malaria Vaccine study) Building at Area 18 Health Centre both as standalone research clinics. In 2017, the UNC Project Annex Building was opened close to the Tidziwe Building. The ground floor of this building hosts the pathology, cell processing, and shipping units while the two top floors have offices and conference rooms.
As of now, UNC Project has over research and training grants in HIV, STIs, malaria control, injury prevention and surgical care, cancer treatment and surveillance, contraceptives, and pediatric care.