N.M. Samuel The story of an anti-HIV/AIDS programme in Tamil Nadu's Namakkal district may hold many lessons for the health professional and policy-planner. National leaders have often urged institutions of learning to be involved in programmes that would have an impact on the lives of India's villagers. The efforts of a medical university in Tamil Nadu have a particular resonance in this context. The Tamilnadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University is a relatively young affiliating university. It is committed to prioritising health care delivery to the masses and providing medical education to achieve this objective. Though the university is the second of its kind in India (the first being the Dr. NTR University of Health Sciences in Andhra Pradesh), it is considered the mother university among health sciences universities. The Department of Experimental Medicine (DEM) was the first department to be started at the university, in 1993. It was the brainchild of Dr. Lalitha Kameswaran, its first Vice-Chancellor. After several brain-storming sessions, it was decided to focus on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malnutrition as the thrust areas for research and education. At that point in time, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS was on the rise in Tamil Nadu, and the need for educational programmes and diagnostic and clinical services in the field was felt. After each teaching session, participants would ask how to treat patients with HIV/AIDS. There were no simple answers to this question. Antiretroviral drugs were prohibitively expensive and had to be imported, and they were beyond the reach of a majority of the patients, particularly those from the rural areas. Zidovudine is an anti-retroviral drug, which, when administered by itself for AIDS therapy, developed resistance. However, in 1995 a group of U.S. researchers showed that the use of the drug prevented the transmission of the virus from mother to infant. This was an exciting discovery and the beginning of