IU Press publishes book on IU-Kenya partnership
Indiana University Press has just published the first book on an IU partnership that is Kenya's most comprehensive initiative to combat HIV.
The book, Walking Together, Walking Far: How a U.S. and African Medical School Partnership is Winning the Fight Against HIV/AIDS, chronicles the historic partnership between Indiana University School of Medicine, Moi University School of Medicine and Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, says author Fran Quigley.
The book's title derives from an African proverb: "If you want to walk fast, walk alone. If you want to walk far, walk together," reflecting how the 20-year partnership has thrived over the long haul in the face of many health and development challenges.
"This Indiana-Moi partnership is a model for how to tackle the huge challenges of HIV/AIDS and poverty in general, and one of the most inspiring examples of humanitarian partnership I have ever seen," writes Jim Morris, former executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, in a statement promoting the new book.
Formed in 1989 between the IU School of Medicine on the IUPUI campus and Moi University in Kenya, the partnership responded to the HIV/AIDS pandemic by establishing The Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH), considered one of the world's largest and most comprehensive programs to combat HIV/AIDS.
Quigley, the book's author, is director of operations for AMPATH.
AMPATH treats more than 70,000 HIV patients at 18 sites across western Kenya, according to IUPUI political science Professor Scott Pegg, who with Butler University Professor David Mason nominated AMPATH for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 and 2008.
"Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to AMPATH would follow and promote a number of distinguished traditions within the history of the Nobel Peace Prize," wrote the professors in their 2008 nominating letter. For one, AMPATH "follows in the traditon of a long line of non-governmental organizations which have received the Nobel Peace Prize for their contributions to world peace and the fraternity between nations' that Alfred Nobel described in his will establishing the Peace Prize."
Walking Together includes the story of the partnership's beginnings, biographical background of AMPATH leaders like Sylvester Kimaiyo, Joe Mamlin, Bob Einterz and Haroun Mengech, a day-in-the-life of AMPATH workers and patients, and behind-the-scenes accounts of the birth of the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), AMPATH's historic launch of door-to-door counseling and testing, and the dramatic story of AMPATH's response to the Kenyan post-election violence of early 2008.
"The reason this book is such an important contribution is that it is about a group of people who questioned received wisdom about what is possible in treating the destitute sick," Partners in Health founder Dr. Paul Farmer wrote in the foreword to Walking Together. "This is a book that should be read by every student of public health."
Walking Together is available now through Amazon.com. The book is scheduled to be available at Indiana bookstores within a few weeks. All author proceeds support AMPATH's work.
