InterPress News Service (IPS); Sunday, 7 April 1996.
Melvis Dzisah

An HIV laboratory, the first of its kind in West Africa, is to be set up in Abidjan, while the U.N. Programme Against AIDS has decided to establish its regional office for West Africa in the Ivoirian capital.

According to the programme's Executive Director, Peter Piot, the United Nations opted for Abidjan because Cote d'Ivoire had adopted an honest attitude towards the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) and AIDS, the condition it causes.

Cote d'Ivoire, which is a member of the UN AIDS Co-ordination Committee, will also host an International Conference on AIDS scheduled for next year, Piot announced during a visit here in March.

The country's move to approach HIV and AIDS with greater openness has also attracted the attention of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, U.S.A., which will finance the setting up of a virological laboratory in Abidjan, CDC Director David Satchers announced here.

He said the laboratory's aims were threefold: studying how the virus is reproduced in the human body so as to develop a vaccine to counter it; identifying how HIV is transmitted, how it kills and how to prevent its propagation; and serving as a training center for young Ivoirian virologists.

According to Satchers, who was here in late March to launch the construction of the Abidjan Virology Laboratory -- expected to cost 400 million CFA francs (nearly 850,000 dollars) -- the institution should start operating in July.

The first known case of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) in Cote d'Ivoire was diagnosed in 1985, the same year that a national anti-AIDS committee was set up. Since then, the number of AIDS patients has increased rapidly, and has now reached 25,000, according to Health Minister Maurice Kakou Guikahue.

Despite the HIV explosion, discussing HIV and AIDS was taboo here for years. The stigma attached to the virus was so powerful that many families abandoned infected relatives.

Health workers only mentioned the virus in the privacy of their clinics. Prostitutes, 80 percent of whom are HIV-positive according to Guikahue, resented the connection made between their profession and the spread of the virus. Politicians appeared embarrassed whenever their attention was drawn to HIV/AIDS.

It is not by chance that the first AIDS patient shown on national tevevision here -- in the late 1980s -- was a Zairean.

But things changed two years ago, when the government decided to face up to the pandemic and launched an anti-AIDS campaign, supported by social workers and non-governmental organisations.

Under the campaign, Ivoirians were encouraged to take care of relatives afflicted by AIDS just as they looked after those suffering from other ailments.

The National AIDS Prevention Committee produced a documentary informing people on the killer virus and on how to avoid infection, while advertisements in newspapers and on radio, TV and posters informed the public on how to live with AIDS patients without endangering their own lives.

As a result of the campaign, more and more people have been taking care of infected relatives while some AIDS sufferers have had the courage to declare publicly that they were infected by HIV.

Piot said the steps taken by Cote d'Ivoire could lead to a decrease in the rate of new infections. He added that one of the main concerns of his office was how to make medicines that prolong the lives of HIV sufferers accessible to all.

He said he believed this could be achieved if donor countries were prepared to contribute towards research and other aspects of the fight against HIV/AIDS. (END/IPS/MD/KB/96)

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