Program

Jeff Stringer is Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ). A native Mississippian, Stringer received his medical degree from Columbia University in 1995, and completed residency in obstetrics and gynecology at UAB in 1999. Stringer moved to Lusaka in 2001 to establish CIDRZ, and has lived there with his wife, Dr. Elizabeth Stringer, and 3 children ever since.
 
CIDRZ is a Zambian non-profit company with 580 employees and an annual budget of $31 million. It is also an important partner to the Zambian government in its fight against HIV/AIDS. CIDRZ began supporting services to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission in 2001, and now, funded largely through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), has helped the Ministry of Health to reach over 600,000 women and their infants nationwide. Since 2003, CIDRZ has worked to roll out AIDS treatment services widely in Zambia. As of August, 2008, these programs have enrolled over 160,000 adults and children, and started over 100,000 on life-saving anti-AIDS drugs.
 
Stringer’s research focuses on prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission, and AIDS therapeutics, particularly in women. He is Principal Investigator of CIDRZ’s NIH-funded HIV/AIDS Clinical Trials Unit, which conducts clinical trials in HIV prevention, antiretroviral therapy, pediatric and maternal HIV, and prevention of HIV with microbicides.