Adam Mellion is a senior at the University of Rhode Island, studying Political Science, French and African Development. He began working with Adopt A Doctor in June 2006 on membership, and has recently been accepted to the Peace Corps to teach English and AIDS education in a French-speaking West African country.

Adopt A Doctor Co-Founder Rajiv Kumar in is Mali (West Africa) working on behalf of Adopt A Doctor and the GAIA AIDS Vaccine Foundation.

While in Bamako, Mali he will be working closely with two Malian physicians who are supported through Adopt A Doctor. In addition to assisting them and documenting their work, Rajiv will be seeking out and identifying new physicians to enroll in our program.

He has been keeping a blog with photos and journal entries to chronicle his experiences.

Click here to read about Rajiv’s summer in Mali.

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island – July 5, 2006— Rajiv Kumar, Co-Founder of Adopt A Doctor and a Brown Medical School student, will be traveling to Mali in West Africa on July 12 to complete a clinical study on the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission during and after birth.

Kumar will work with Dr. Malick Kone of the Providence-based GAIA Vaccine Foundation in its AIDS clinic in Mali to assess the efficacy of the clinic’s new HIV transmission prevention treatment, which includes medication to prevent infection of the baby during birth and counseling of the mothers to prevent infection after birth. He will travel to villages around Bamako, Mali to locate and conduct HIV-tests on forty infants whose mothers are HIV-positive and who received treatment and counseling one year ago through the clinic. The results of the tests will determine the success of the Foundation’s innovative HIV transmission prevention model. The outcome of this year-long study will be published and presented at the World AIDS Conference in Seattle in August 2006.

In addition to his work with the GAIA Vaccine Foundation, Kumar will be traveling to Mali on behalf of Adopt A Doctor, a Providence-based non-profit that supports under-funded doctors working in developing countries. Kumar will be visiting Drs. Malick Kone and Adama Daou, two Malian physicians who currently receive monthly financial support from the organization, to discuss and observe their work and to deliver three months of funding. He will also be identifying two new Malian physicians to be supported by Adopt A Doctor.

For more information about GAIA Vaccine Foundation, please visit www.gaiavaccine.org