Panafrican News Agency - December 4, 2001
Tepitapia Sannah, PANA Journalist

Professor Robert Soudre, Organising chair of the week-long Conference, also said the meeting would "review care and community help, and their links within the official health care system."

The Conference will bring together hundreds of African and international experts, stakeholders and persons living with HIV/AIDS, to examine all aspects of the fight against the pandemic in Africa.

Under the theme, "The communities commit themselves," it will underscore the need for an participative approach to the fight against AIDS, conference sources say.

Participants will review, discuss and provide updates on the major advances in the understanding of the HIV/AIDS and STDs on the continent.

They will also consider the socio-economic, cultural, political, epidemiological, clinical and basic science of the spread of AIDS in Africa.

The Conference will equally analyse various responses to the pandemic and evaluate the extent to which these responses have impacted on the course and status of the disease.

It will suggest new (or strengthen old) strategies and priorities for dealing with the pandemic from an African perspective and resource context.

Soudre said "all practitioners attending the meeting must leave with renewed confidence in their ability to do something for their patients".

He also urged all participating researchers to "find new incentives for vaccine research and basic science," while "economists and public health specialists must renew their insights into the spread of HIV and its socio-economic consequences.

He said the theme "represents a new awareness among all those involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and that the communities themselves have a central role to play in finding an effective solution to the pandemic".

"The HIV/AIDS epidemic is a general problem with local solutions, and this is why work needs to be done in the different communities to create units which are capable of facing up to the epidemic," Soudre added.

Organisers said the theme was chosen, "because the pandemic is not only a health problem, but also a development problem, the whole community is implicated in finding a solution."

"The most helpful responses to the epidemic so far have been those that build on the mobilisation of communities, it is absolutely necessary to study community projects, to highlight their successes and examine the difficulties encountered in organising community participation.

"Only a community whose knowledge of HIV/AIDS has been reinforced will be able to face up to the epidemic," they added.

The 11th ICASA, held in Lusaka in 1999, reviewed 20 years of efforts, successes and lessons learned in dealing with HIV/AIDS, and also examined difficulties encountered in the process.
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