An ultrasound machine donated by Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island was recently installed at a community health clinic in Mali, West Africa. Clinicians in the area were then trained with the help of a physician and the Providence-based organization. The machine is being used to diagnose and manage high-risk pregnancies.

The Global Alliance to Immunize Against AIDS (GAIA) Vaccine Foundation, founded in 2002 by Dr. Anne DeGroot, associate professor of pediatric infectious disease at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, is dedicated to preventing HIV while supporting the development of a globally relevant and accessible HIV vaccine. GAIA's mission also includes providing more advanced care for pregnant women, many of whom are HIV positive and might otherwise transmit the virus to their babies.

Three years ago, Rebecca Gerber, MD, approached Women & Infants' physicians about donating an ultrasound machine and the necessary probes and attachments for GAIA, after convincing DeGroot that the organization should consider expanding its services to include diagnostic imaging studies.

"It was a wonderful opportunity for Women & Infants to put what we consider to be an outdated machine to good use in a community that lacks adequate care for pregnant women," notes Tom Hughes, FACHE, director of Diagnostic Imaging at the hospital, about the resulting donation.

With a piece of equipment secured, GAIA started organizing shipment, a task that involved intense fundraising efforts by pre-medical students at the Alpert Medical School and Boston University. In the meantime, Gerber, a 2008 graduate of Alpert specializing in radiology, spent hours with Cindy Botvin, a sonographer with Rhode Island Medical Imaging, to learn how to use the ultrasound machine.

Earlier this year, the ultrasound was shipped and installed at the Hope Center Clinic located in a peri-urban slum in Bamako, Mali, Gerber notes. The clinic provides basic medical services as well as AIDS and tuberculosis treatment. GAIA Vaccine Foundation has been supporting the delivery of health care in Sikoro since 2005. Brown pre-med students traveled to Mali to help with the project and local foundations supported the construction of a new HIV care center in 2008. Earlier this year, GAIA's Hope Center Clinic became the first village-based infirmary to deliver HIV care in Mali. The Hope Center will become a model for Mali's 750 other clinics, DeGroot says.

"This is an invaluable resource," Gerber says. "The goal is to screen for high-risk pregnancy in HIV-positive women, but the machine can also be used much more generally as well.

"The ultrasound enables physicians at the clinic to triage challenging cases and send patients to the nearby magnet hospital for further evaluation and obstetric care. This will save the lives of pregnant women who might otherwise die in childbirth," she adds, noting that complications from pregnancy and childbirth are responsible for one third of the deaths of Malian women aged 15 to 49.

As the village and its chief welcomed the machine as a "great gift," Gerber, the GAIA director, clinic doctors, engineers, and electricians struggled with electrical conversions. Initially, the machine would drain so much electricity that the service would surge and could shut down to the entire clinic. It took about a week and a half to figure out how to configure the machine to convert the clinic's electricity.

"It was thrilling to be there when mothers would see their babies for the first time," Gerber says.

Now back from Mali, Gerber and GAIA are planning to find more machines for the community. In time, they hope to secure donated portable and stationary ultrasound machines that will afford more flexibility in terms of access to care. Currently, the machines are very expensive.

To learn more about GAIA or to donate, visit the organization's website at http://www.gaiavaccine.org.

Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, a Care New England hospital, is one of the nation's leading specialty hospitals for women and newborns. The primary teaching affiliate of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University for obstetrics, gynecology and newborn pediatrics, Women & Infants is the seventh largest obstetrical service in the country with more than 9,000 deliveries per year. Women & Infants has been designated as a Breast Center of Excellence from the American College of Radiography; a Center for In Vitro Maturation Excellence by SAGE In Vitro Fertilization; and a Neonatal Resource Services Center of Excellence. It is one of the largest and most prestigious research facilities in high risk and normal obstetrics, gynecology and newborn pediatrics in the nation, and is a member of the National Cancer Institute's Gynecologic Oncology Group. The hospital was named Rhode Island's Best Place to Work by Providence Business News and a National Center of Excellence in Women's Health by the federal government. For information about Women & Infants, log on to www.womenandinfants.org.