TMC PULSE

t m c » p u l s e | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 5 17 PROGRAMS ACROSS THE TEXAS MEDICAL CENTER ARE COMMITTING RESOURCES TO PROVIDING MEDICAL CARE AND EDUCATION AROUND THE WORLD A t a pediatric HIV/AIDS clinic in Romania, a small child is given the antiretroviral drugs that will save his life. A prema- ture infant in Malawi breathes easier thanks to a cost-effective and location-appropriate device, while down the road, budding Malawian doctors train to provide care for their countrymen. Each of these events is connected by a common thread: a Texas Medical Center institution that has embraced the idea that medicine knows no borders, no socioeconomic background, no race or ethnicity. That part of being a world-class provider of health care and education means giving back on a global scale. From clinical care to research and education, TMC institutions have committed resources to dozens of countries. One of the longest- running global outreach programs in the med- ical center is the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative (BIPAI). In 1996, a chance encounter with a member of Romania's parlia- ment brought BIPAI President and Founder Mark Kline, M.D., to Constanta, Romania, then the pediatric AIDS capital of the world. During a recent presentation to Baylor medical students, Kline recounted that first visit. "Everywhere I went, I saw HIV and AIDS-infected children warehoused, waiting to die, without any prospect of antiretroviral drugs that were being used to treat children in the U.S.," he said. "Whole wards of abandoned children in hospitals with no medical treatment, no socialization." Kline, now the J.S. Abercrombie Professor and chairman of the department of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and the Ralph D. Feigin Chair and physician-in-chief of Texas Children's Hospital, returned with a new sense of purpose. He gathered enough funding from a variety of sources, from Elton John to Catholic We're committed to working with people in these countries for years. You're not going to get much done in one visit—it takes relationship building. — JOAN EDWARDS, PH.D. Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Global Nursing Scholarship at Texas Woman's University GOI NG GLOBAL B y S h e a C o n n e l l y nuns, to found the first BIPAI clinical center of excellence in an abandoned orphanage in Constanta. "We saw 165 people the day we opened and we never looked back," Kline said. In just a few years, the death rate in Constanta dropped from 13 percent to less than one percent. Today, BIPAI continues to treat patients in centers of excellence around the world. "We still have a strong commitment to HIV/ AIDS work, but we do work in a number of other areas as well," Kline said. "We never want to turn a child away, whether he has HIV or meningitis." Additionally, BIPAI founded the Pediatric AIDS Corps, now known as the Texas Children's Global Health Corps—essentially a Peace Corps for physicians. Global Health Corps physicians commit a year or more to working in one of BIPAI's locations around the world. "To the extent possible we hire local physi- cians, but in many of the places there are almost no doctors," Kline said. Take Botswana, for example. Over the course of several decades, the government sent nearly 3,000 students abroad to study medicine. Very few ever returned. Left: A young mother from a remote mountaintop village in Uganda prepares to be taken to the hospital. Right: A mother carries her child to a checkup in Uganda. (Photos: Smiley Pool)

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