For the past 10 years, Merck has supported HIV and AIDS clinical training programs for more than 2,200 African physicians from 24 countries. This has included support for local workshops, regional and international scientific conferences and clinical preceptorships.  Program participants have included heads of national HIV and AIDS programs in African countries, together with key treating physicians who then share their expertise with colleagues in a "train-the-trainers" approach. Many of these HIV specialists have since become referral physicians in local hospitals.  Examples of programs include:

African Comprehensive HIV and AIDS Partnerships (ACHAP)

Through ACHAP, Merck has supported health care worker training, encompassing both theoretical and clinical training.

• KITSO Program: ACHAP has partnered with Harvard AIDS Institute and The Ministry of Health to develop curriculum that includes eight core modules on HIV and AIDS clinical care fundamentals. To date, the program – known as KITSO knowledge—has provided classroom training to more than 7,000 of Botswana’s health care workers.
• Clinical Preceptorship Program: In the clinical preceptorship program, HIV specialist doctors from the United States and Europe came to Botswana for a period of at least three months to provide hands-on, clinic-based training to local medical staff. Between 2002 and 2006, more than 3,200 physicians, nurses and other health care professionals had received hands-on, clinic based training through this program. The preceptorship program has now been incorporated into the ongoing national clinical training program managed by the Government of Botswana.
• Laboratory technicians: ACHAP supported the recruitment and training of 12 laboratory technicians on medical equipment for CD4 cell count and viral load testing. The technicians were than dispatched to clinical laboratories throughout the country. Additional laboratory equipment is being purchased for district hospitals and training of additional laboratory staff is being undertaken to support efforts of decentralizing this work.
• Government training: During the first two years of the partnership, ACHAP helped to train nearly 250 civil servants from the Ministry of Health and the Department of Health Services of Local Government in project management. ACHAP also supported training of staff at the National Blood bank in donor screening, counseling, good laboratory practices and quality control. ACHAP was also responsible for funding and filling the positions of hospital manager at the reference hospitals in Gaborone and Francistown.

Merck Vaccine Network - Africa

As part of our commitment to the GAVI Alliance (GAVI), Merck initiated in 2003 the  Merck Vaccine Network - Africa (MVN-A), a multi-year philanthropic initiative to help increase the capacity of national immunization programs in Africa by supporting academic partnerships in the development of sustainable immunization training programs. In support of GAVI's mission of increasing children's access to vaccines and strengthening delivery systems in the world's poorest countries, MVN-A training programs in Kenya, Mali, Uganda and Zambia provide mid- to high-level immunization program managers with hands-on training in vaccine management and immunization services.

West Africa HIV and AIDS Degree Program: Merck has provided financial and organizational support for the HIV and AIDS University Degree for French-speaking countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Launched in 2004, the degree program is organized by the University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in collaboration with the University Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI), France and the Societe Francaise de Lutte contree le SIDA (French AIDS Society). The program aims to improve the medical management of HIV-infected people in West Africa through an intensive, multidisciplinary four-week training course for health care professionals. Each year, more than 100 physicians, pharmacists and nurses complete the course and receive academic certificates. Most participants become trainers in their home countries. The financial support from Merck and other partners allows the students to be totally supported financially (i.e., covers trip, tuition and full board accommodation).

International Rescue Committee (IRC) Health Coordinators Conference: Merck funding supported a Health Coordinators Conference in June 2007 in Uganda for 45 health care workers in conflict/emergency areas globally. Topics included review and orientation of IRC’s health strategy and priorities, roll-out of IRC minimum indicators for monitoring and evaluation of health programs, nutrition and food security training, and introduction of IRC’s post-rape protocols.  Funding from Merck has been critical in supporting the ongoing provision of technical assistance.  

University of Kwazulu-Natal/Health Economics & HIV and AIDS Research Division (HEARD): From 2004-2007, Merck supported various training programs including HEARD's HIV and AIDS Course "Planning for HIV and AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa." The course is designed for senior professionals concerned with planning for the economic, social, demographic and human resource implications of the HIV and AIDS epidemic and will allow participants to exchange ideas, review their experiences with strategies and tactics, and identify interventions appropriate to their local situation.

The University of Cape Town (UCT) HAICU and TSiBA (Tertiary School in Business Administration) have collaborated to use best practices that have helped develop relevant, culturally sensitive, factual HIV education and communication tools aimed at local youth from the townships surrounding Cape Town, South Africa. The primary goal of the program is to mitigate HIV stigma and discrimination, while measuring behaviour change through unique activities. With support from Merck & Co., Inc. that started in 2005, this program strives to equip at-risk youth with decision making skills as well as a knowledge base on which to make decisions, while creating a forum to talk openly about issues such as sex and HIV. The combination of HAICU’s medical expertise and experience in HIV education workshop delivery, together with TSiBA’s commitment to experiential learning and a spirit of "Paying it Forward" have contributed to the unique and successful HIV prevention outreach program.

mothers2mothers (m2m) Starting in 2008, Merck has supported m2m, an organization that addresses prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) by utilizing the community’s greatest, ever-renewing resource - its own mothers. By employing mothers living with HIV (‘Mentor Mothers’) as peer educators and professional members of the healthcare team, m2m is designed to improve the effective delivery of care for the PMTCT in public health facilities across sub-Saharan Africa and currently operates in seven countries:  Kenya,  Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland and Zambia (Merck's support enables program activity in Lesotho.).  By the end of 2008, m2m had a total of almost 500 sites across Africa, employing 1,400 women living with HIV/AIDS as mentors. In places where male partners are key to the PMTCT process, m2m has begun offering education and support groups for partners and couples, reaching a milestone of more than one million client encounters in 2008.

Earth Institute's Millennium Villages Community Health Worker Training Program:In 2009, with support from The Merck Company Foundation, the Earth Institute at Columbia University launched a community health worker training program to strengthen community health services for over 400,000 people in ten African countries as part of the Millennium Villages project (www.millenniumvillages.org).  The initiative aims to advance the development of a professional cadre of approximately 800 community health workers to fill a critical gap in primary health care provision for rural communities throughout Africa.  The program will ensure that participating community health workers are skilled, well trained, properly remunerated, regularly supervised and fully integrated into their countries' health care system.

MECTIZAN Donation Program

The delivery strategy known as Community-Directed Treatment with Ivermectin (CDTI), championed by the World Health Organization and piloted in the delivery of MECTIZAN^® (ivermectin), has enabled communities to organize, direct and manage their own treatment, with more than 125,000 communities now responsible for MECTIZAN treatment.  In the CDTI model, each community selects and supports their own distributors who are then trained in financial management, computer skills, operational research, basic medical skills and technical writing.  From 1998 through 2005, more than 350,000 community-directed distributors in 16 African countries received this training. For more information, please click here.

ICN/Merck Mobile Libraries and The Merck Manuals

From 2001 to 2008, Merck partnered with the International Council of Nurses (ICN) and Elsevier Science, the leading publisher of scientific reference textbooks, to help nurses working in remote areas of developing countries gain critical access to quality health care information. The ICN/Merck Mobile Library Program provides traveling libraries of health education and reference materials, including donated copies of The Merck Manual - Home Edition, in African countries. More than 215 mobile libraries, each comprising some 90 specially selected books, bring up-to-date information on family and community health, disease prevention, health promotion and health services training to nurses who have limited access to reference books or expert advice. The libraries, which are packed into specially designed transportable trunks resistant to moisture, insects and damage, are aimed at reaching remote locations. Altogether, the libraries have reached tens of thousands of people in more than 300 clinical settings in 17 countries. A Portuguese version of the ICN/Merck Mobile Library was developed in partnership with the Ordem dos Enfermeiros, ICN member national nurses association in Portugal, and was launched in 2007 in Angola, Mozambique and São Tomé & Principe.

Building on the work of the ICN/Merck Mobile Library, the Nursing Libraries for Refugee Health was launched in February 2006. It was a collaboration of ICN, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Merck to provide current health care information and training to nurses and health workers serving refugee populations in Africa. From 2006 to 2008, 50 libraries were established in refugee camps and settlements and in the local hosting districts in Tanzania and Zambia. More than 2,500 nurses and health workers participated in related training activities during the project period. In 2008, the Nursing Libraries for Refugee Health were integrated into the principal ICN/Merck Mobile Library Program. 

In addition to the ICN/Merck Mobile Library program, Merck has donated 60,000 copies of The Merck Manual to nongovernmental organizations for distribution to physicians, nurses and community health workers throughout Africa.

Merck Manual Distribution Performance Data Summary 2005-2008

	2008	2007	2006	2005
Number of Merck Manuals donated to individual countries in support of nurses/US$ value*	30/ $750	1,689/$67,087	940/$37,777	5,501/$138,787

The content on this page was last modified on September 15, 2009.

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*Numbers represent books shipped to individual countries in support of nurses in addition to those donated through the ICN/Merck Mobile Libraries.