Gladstone's Warner Greene Named President of the Academic Alliance

By Valerie Tucker (415) 734-2019 Warner C. Greene, MD PhD, director of Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology (GIVI) has been appointed President of the Academic Alliance Foundation (AAF), an organization dedicated to fighting HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases in Africa by establishing and supporting programs of training, prevention and care. A major focus of the foundation is building health care capacity by strengthening academic medical centers in the region. Greene, who is also co-director of the federally funded UCSF-Gladstone Center for AIDS Research, succeeds the late Dr. Merle Sande, MD, who served as the foundation's first President. "Warner Greene is a physician-scientist who has devoted his career to the study of HIV," said Dr. Henry A. McKinnell, former chief executive officer of Pfizer, Inc. and chair of the AAF Board of Directors. "I can think of no one better qualified to lead the Academic Alliance Foundation as it enters its next phase of urgent and exciting work." "The Academic Alliance Foundation is a truly unique organization that has and is continuing to make innovative responses to the real and present threat posed by HIV/AIDS in Africa," Greene said. "Under Dr. Sande's guidance, AAF, in collaboration with the Infectious Diseases Institute at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda has trained nearly 2,000 African physicians and health care workers from 26 countries in advanced HIV care thereby helping to build medical capacity, is caring for 10,000 HIV-infected patients in its clinic, and is launching new urban-based programs aimed at HIV prevention that could help curb the raging HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa where 25 million are already infected." AIDS remains a leading cause of death in Africa and throughout the world. Every day, nearly 7,000 people are newly infected with the virus and 5,700 die as a result of AIDS. The global challenge of AIDS is huge and the need even larger. Organizations like AAF represent a key component in the world's attempt to turn the tide in sub-Saharan Africa. About the Gladstone Institutes The J. David Gladstone Institutes, an independent, non-profit biomedical research organization affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), is dedicated to the health and welfare of humankind through research into the causes and prevention of some of the world's most devastating diseases. Gladstone is comprised of the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology and the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease. More information can be found here. About the Academic Alliance The Academic Alliance Foundation (AAF) overcomes the burden of infectious diseases by building healthcare capacity and strengthening academic medical institutions in Africa. For more information visit the website.