PAN AFRICAN MEETING ON HIV/AIDS
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Source: WHO/UNAIDS, 2005 The PanAfrican HIV/AIDS Experts Conference gathers HIV/AIDS experts from all countries who work together to find ways and means to facilitate access to treatment, as well as to simplify the treatment itself.  The second Pan-African HIV Experts meeting was held June 15-18, 2006 in Nairobi, Kenya. Co-sponsored by MSD and Gilead, today partners in a new Once Daily Single Tablet Regimen now available to HIV patients in Africa, this meeting gathered about 40 experts from English-speaking African countries.
"The Pan African HIV experts meeting was initiated as a forum for doctors and other healthcare professionals involved in HIV management in Africa, to get together and to share experiences about what is happening in this environment. The African environment is different to other developing world environments. It is different to the Asian environment, it is certainly different to the developed world environment; and the solutions that we seek are African solutions, and not necessarily one African solution, but solutions that come from different parts of Africa that can be applied throughout it. We have a mandate to increase, as we move on through the years, the number of countries to attend. This is a fairly small meeting, in order that we can actually make it very interactive, but at this meeting we have nine African countries represented, and because of our issues with translation, this is an English meeting. Hopefully, in the years to come, next year or the year thereafter, we'll be starting to include French speaking clinicians as well. The speakers are primarily from the African countries and we also have speakers who are here from the UK and from the USA as well as clinicians who are involved in various internationally funded programs, the PEPFAR program predominantly, from the USA, who are based in various countries: Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, etc. HIV, combined with Tuberculosis and Malaria as the three big diseases, is a devastating blow to Africa and, unchecked, will totally and absolutely decimate everything we are doing. At the moment, we have reached less than ten percent of people in voluntary counseling and testing programs; less than 10 % of women who require mother to child transmission prophylaxis have access to that; less than 10% of people who need antiretroviral therapy have access to that. So, without an enormous amount of input, without an enormous amount of assistance and without an enormous amount of work and new strategies, HIV is something that will make Africa not progress. It will certainly decimate the economies of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and solutions need to be found. The solutions need to be more than just drug solutions, they are about community solutions, they are about keeping people alive, they are about maintaining economies, they are very much bigger than medical problems and they certainly are socio-political solutions. This is what we actually seek. I think that one of the strengths of this particular meeting and of the meetings that will be held in the future, is that we are gathering like-minded people who understand the issues, all of whom treat many hundreds if not thousands of people, with or without ARVs. Many of us have come through the situation where we had no access to ARVs at all, and have had all sorts of experiences working with HIV and we are looking to save our homeland. I think that's the bottom line about it."
In the future, we want to set up a more structured educational system for HIV treatment in Africa, and some kind of collaborative research in different countries. I think that as conference grows and matures, we will be able to collaborate and achieve a lot more."
"What you notice is the great difference in people within Africa, between the countries and within the countries themselves. What we get here is a group of people coming with various diverse opinions, diverse backgrounds, all with one thing on their minds: ' Which is the best way to treat HIV disease?' Not only about treating HIV disease with drugs, but about monitoring, when to start, dealing with the problems that ARVs give you and dealing with the positive side of ARVs as well. It is really about getting people together, getting their opinions, and trying to come up with fairly firm solutions as to which is the right way to really do the battle against HIV/AIDS. Clearly the problem in Africa is vast. Coming from Europe where we think we've got a problem, we don't really understand the enormity of the problem in Africa. What strikes me, though, is how well advanced treatment strategies are, and the setups within the clinics. The way the clinics work [in Africa] is certainly no worse than the way the clinics work in the UK. Somewhere the structures are much better: they have a limited resource which they use to its full potential, full potential in getting the people on treatment but also in giving them the best treatment available."
"It is very important to update our knowledge and share experience. This is a very inspirational meeting. We have discussed about many best practices, we have revised a numbers of studies relevant to Africa about HIV care and ARV therapy, and we have identified very crucial issues which we will use for advocacy. When I go back, I will relay this information to my colleagues and update them. At the national level, I will advocate about the availability of more ARV drugs." Interviews and photos by Frederique Remy. |
