Dr. Alex G. Coutinho

Dr. Coutinho is executive director of the Infectious Disease Institute at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. From 2001 to 2007 he served as executive director of The AIDS Support Organisation of Uganda (TASO), the largest AIDS care and support organisation in sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to joining TASO, he worked in a range of capacities for the Royal Swaziland Sugar Corporation (RSSC) with progressively greater responsibility for community services, focusing especially on HIV. He established holistic prevention and care services, voluntary counselling and testing (VCT), management of opportunistic infections, a tuberculosis clinic, an AIDS clinic, a peer education programme as well as hospital management and palliative care for terminal AIDS patients. These services were implemented using a multisectoral approach that involved schools, communities, churches and unions in an expanded HIV prevention and care programme. He has provided counselling and care to hundreds of AIDS patients in Uganda and Swaziland. Dr. Coutinho was a member of the interim board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria as the fund was established, and he served as the vice chair of the Global Fund Technical Review Panel for two years. He was vice chair of the board of the Regional AIDS Training Network and a member of the strategic advisory group for the WHO HIV/AIDS global strategy. He is currently a member of the scientific committee of the Academic Alliance for HIV/AIDS as well as a board member of the AIDS Information Centre — the largest VCT nongovernmental organisation in Africa. He has published a number of articles on AIDS service provision. He holds an MB ChB and an MSc from Makerere University and an MPH from the University of the Witwatersrand.