KAMPALA (Reuters) - The biggest HIV/AIDS training center in sub-Saharan Africa opened in Uganda Wednesday with officials hopeful it will significantly boost the continent's ability to fight the pandemic.

The Infectious Diseases Institute, largely funded by drug giant Pfizer, aims to teach hundreds of health care workers advanced techniques in fighting a disease the United Nations estimates has infected 26 million people in Africa.

"We know that one hospital, in one African nation, is not going to solve the crisis of HIV/AIDS," Pfizer chief executive officer Hank McKinnell said before the opening, which was attended by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

"But we also understand that if professionals at this hospital can train a hundred like them in a year, then that hundred can train thousands more in the years that follow."

The center will also be the biggest facility in East Africa for treating HIV/AIDS sufferers with the latest antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), its founders say.

AIDS killed up to 2.2 million Africans last year, while some 3 million became infected with HIV.

Uganda was chosen to host the center largely due to the success of a proactive government campaign that saw infection rates drop to 6 percent from around 30 percent in the mid-1990s.

The new facility, once fully operational, is expected to treat as many 500 patients a day and aims to train about 200 doctors a year. "Our students will, in many cases, return to rural clinics that lack the most basic resources," said Dr. Moses Kamya, the institute's director of training.

"If and when they begin prescribing ARVs, they need to know what tests they can do without and still be relatively successful in monitoring and treating patients."

The facility was set up by a wide array of doctors' associations, academics, pharmaceutical companies, civil society groups and the Ugandan government.

Pfizer has spent $15 million on building the center and says it will support the operating costs of the center.

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