Washington and field staff pose at PSI’s booth
during ICASA in Dakar, Senegal. Fifteen staff
attended the conference.
DAKAR, Senegal, December 3, 2008 —Fifteen PSI staff from eight countries and Washington headquarters presented lessons from their HIV prevention work and learned from others while leaders called for an increased emphasis on prevention at the 15th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa, held in Dakar, Senegal, from Dec. 3-7.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade opened the conference Dec. 3 with a strong call for greater efforts to prevent HIV. Without prevention, he said, the number of people affected by AIDS will continue to grow, and this will threaten the equilibrium of health systems and entire societies.
PSI staff from Cameroon, Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe and the Washington headquarters were here to learn and share PSI’s 20 years of HIV prevention work.
Hope Hempstone, technical advisor in PSI’s HIV department, participated in a “symposium satellite” session on the role of male and female condoms in HIV prevention sponsored by UNFPA. Dr. Didier Adjoua from PSI/Côte d’Ivoire participated in a non-abstract driven session on “Building Evidence-Based Combination Prevention” to draw attention to the need for enhanced leadership for intensifying evidence-based combination prevention by focusing more on where, how and why transmission is taking place and addressing both immediate risk and vulnerabilities.
PSI also had 13 poster presentations; here are a few examples:
- Catching the Catcher: How Working with the Police Can Increase Condom Use among Female Sex Workers (Nigeria)
- The HIV Basic Care Package (Uganda)
- “Y’ello Réglo”: A Program of Interpersonal Communication by Young People and for Young People of Cameroon.
- Strengthening the Islamic Response to HIV and AIDS in Nigeria: Mobilising Leadership Support for Strategic Direction.
- Religious Leaders Requesting HIV Test Results: Implications for HIV/AIDS stigma and discrimination Reduction Efforts in Nigeria
- Sensitization of Girls 15-24 on the Risks of Cross-Generational Sex: The Second Phase of the Campaign in Bamenda, Cameroon.
- Giving the Community a Voice: Building the Capacity of Community Members to Monitor and Evaluate Programme Impact (Nigeria)
- Sensitization of Transporters and River Populations along Transport Routes in Cameroon on the Risks of HIV transmission.
- From Evidence to Action: Use of Geographic Information Systems to Improve Condom Coverage in Zimbabwe
PSI had a booth for four full days, staffed by a combination of Washington and field staff, and we had many visitors from Morocco and Mauritania to Madagascar and Mozambique.