Zambia

The School of Nursing has been working with partners in Zambia since 2006 on several projects, building on the long-standing partnership established through the UAB-affiliated Center for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ, http://www.cidrz.org/ ), and programs supported by the UAB Sparkman Center for Global Health (http://www.sparkmancenter.org/ ). One of these projects involves working with the General Nursing Council of Zambia, the Zambia Union of Nursing Organizations, the University of Zambia, the Lusaka School of Nursing, CIDRZ, AIDS Relief, the Zambia Ministry of Health, and other partners to develop a distance-based certificate program to prepare nurses for advanced roles in care, treatment and support of patients with HIV and AIDS. The photo below illustrates many of the key partners who participated in a curriculum development workshop to develop the curriculum for the HIV Nurse Practitioner diploma program in January, 2009.

A second project has involved using distance-education strategies to provide courses in teaching and in research coordination to study coordinators at CIDRZ. The photo below shows the graduation ceremony held in June 2008 for seven of these coordinators in Lusaka, Zambia.

A third project involves work with the World Health Organization, the University of Iowa, and other partners to develop the nursing collection of digital resources for the eGranary collection of digital resources that can be accessed without internet access. This project will provide access to resources that otherwise may not be accessible in low-resource countries with limited internet access. Further information about this project can be found at http://www.widernet.org/digitallibrary/ .