Offer of support to set up a programme for training physicians in HIV/AIDS clinical care

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

Subject: An offer to Medical Colleges, other training institutions and

centres to set up a programme for training physicians in HIV/AIDS clinical

care.

This is an invitation, and offer of support from the Sexual Health Resource

Centre (SHRC) and Christian Medical College, Vellore to other medical

colleges, training institutions and centres involved in HIV/ AIDS care, to

set up a postgraduate level programme, the " Fellowship in HIV Medicine " for

training physicians in HIV/AIDS clinical care.

The Fellowship in HIV Medicine is a one year course developed and tested at

Christian Medical College, along with the Population Council and Open

University, UK.

This course has targeted physicians working at secondary hospitals involved

in HIV/AIDS care in the four southern states of the country. It consists of

6 weeks of contact courses at CMC, 4 months of distance learning (12

modules) and 6 months of project work. The project work aims at establishing

basic HIV care services in the trainees' hospitals including, out-patient

care, in-patient care, counseling, HIV testing and staff education. The

methodology of the course is referred to as " training-service development

approach " .

The evaluation of this course has demonstrated the efficacy of the

methodology in developing basic and quality assured HIV/AIDS clinical

services in the trainees' hospitals.

Based on the success of this programme, SHRC and CMC are working in

partnership to replicate this in various regions by developing capacity to

run similar training around the country. We are working towards identifying

institutions that are interested in developing programmes similar to the one

running at Vellore.

We are interested to know if your organization is interested in developing

and running the Fellowship in HIV Medicine at your centre. Also if you are

aware of institutions who may be interested in running this programme,

kindly forward this letter to them. If you are interested please send a

letter to shrc@... and we shall send you the detailed application

form and brochure, which provides more details of the programme. Application

forms are also available on: http://www.cmch-vellore.edu .

If your institution is interested, we would request you to fill the

application and send it to above address by December 31st 2004.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Anand Zachariah

Professor of Medicine Unit 1 & Infectious Diseases,

Course Co-ordinator of HIV Physician Training Program,

CMC Vellore.

Email: <zachariah@...>