Update on HopeGAIA donors have provided morethan $125,000 in support for thefoundation of the Hope Center Clinicin Sikoro, Mali. This new clinical HIVcare center in an impoverishedneighborhood in West Africa willfacilitate the delivery of highly activeantiretroviral therapy (HAART) to asmany as 1,000 infected children andtheir parents. Funds were donatedor promised by The Sun AlsoRises Foundation (TSARF),Gilead Foundation, Adopt aDoctor, Keep a Child Alive, andsome very generous donors in thegreater Providence community.Thank you! Ongoing support for theclinic is still needed.The Hope Center Clinic site wasidentified during this summer,permission was obtained from localauthorities, and the design of thenew clinic is now underway.Access to life-saving HIV/AIDSdrugs is limited in Mali due to thelack of HIV clinics that providespecialized care. GAIA VF seeks toestablish this clinic as a model for“communal self-care” that may bereplicated in other neighborhoods inBamako and the rest of Mali, shouldthe model be successful. Thus,future beneficiaries will also includeall HIV-infected children and theirparents in Mali, West Africa.

Electronic Medical Records forMaliIn the summer of 2004, with sixdonated laptops and a donated copyof the LabTracker Software system,GAIA volunteer Jared Meshekowtraveled to Mali take part in a pilotprogram to implement LabTracker, aunique software tool which allowsfor the tracking of lab results forHIV-positive patients.Jared, who is now finishing his third

More GAIA News – Summer 2006

GAIA Vaccine FoundationGAIA Newsletter

Summer 2006

year of undergraduate studies atBoston University, returned to Malithis summer to provide support forthe users of the LabTrackerSoftware. He retrained clinicians onLabTracker, updated their versions,provided assistance with data entry,and worked on translating theLabTracker system to French.

Jared was assisted by M o s e sBrown High School student AliBicki, who entered patient data intothe EMR at Chez Rosalie, the GAIAVF mother-to-child HIV transmissionprevention program. These effortswill improve the development offunctional Electronic Medical Record(EMR) system in Mali, which is acritical aspect of the “Scale Up” fornational HIV care.

International AIDS conference,TorontoGAIA’s Alexa La Faunce, MadelineDiLorenzo and Director MalickKone M.D. traveled to the IAC inAugust 2006. Dr. Kone reported onGAIA”s work in Mali to conferenceparticipants. Reports written byDiLorenzo and Millennium VillageProject’s Negin are provided here:

Speakers, part ic ipants andadvocates attending World AIDSconference focused their concern onthe crisis in human resourcescapacity - one of the most significantchallenges in the global response toAIDS. WHO (the World HealthOrganization) identified the need for

training of 100,000 additionalhealth providers and communitytreatment supporters in order toaccomplish the agency’s AIDStreatment target – to get all of thepatients who need HIV medicationsinto care by 2010.

WHO Call for Access to CareKevin M. DeCock (Director, Divisionof HIV/AIDS, WHO) made yetanother call for universal access tohighly active antiretroviral therapy(HAART), the current standard ofcare for HIV/AIDS. Despite the factthat we learned about the benefits ofHAART more than 10 years ago,millions of people still do not receivethis beneficial therapy. Currently,6.8 million people in thedeveloping world are in need ofHAART, but only 24% of thesepeople were on HAART as ofJune 2006. DeCock also pointedout recent data showing protectionagainst HIV infection following malecircumcision, and called for furtherresearch on the role of malecircumcision and microbicides inHIV prevention.

Since 90% of the world’spopulation remains unaware oftheir HIV status and millionsremain in need of treatment,DeCock also called for both mobiletesting and treatment to reach hard-to-reach populations in rural areas.GAIA VF is proud to be respondingto this need in West Africa.