Research Improving Lives in Uganda

He was 39 years old but moved like an old man, his body weakened by HIV, his right side withered by stroke. At a crowded clinic in Entebbe, Uganda, he confessed that he could not stop crying, and a voice in his head kept telling him to end it.

He had already bought a rope.

His HIV diagnosis once would have been a swift and sure death sentence here. But stunning advances in antiretroviral drugs have helped transform the disease into something in many ways more complicated: a chronic condition, a life sentence.

A small team of researchers from the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND research organization has spent years working with local clinics in Uganda to help people not just survive HIV, but learn to live with it, and even thrive. Their work has helped treatment-weary patients keep up with their medicine, delivered care to itinerant fishermen, and let one desperate man, age beyond his years, see the way to another day.

Click here to read the rest of this post from RAND Review magazine.