Physical Health Mali Project #4874

Nutrition and peer support for HIV+ patients

by GAIA Vaccine Foundation

Nutrition and peer support for HIV+ patients

Project Report | Dec 1, 2012
2012 World AIDS Day Update

By Mali Rochas | Executive Director

2012 is GAIA Vaccine Foundation’s 10^th anniversary! 10 years ago, we first set out to establish collaborations with Malian HIV researchers. GAIA VF was subsequently established to coordinate networking among HIV/AIDS governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, and HIV care providers, as well as to tackle the problem of misinformation about HIV/AIDS treatment among clinicians and patients that could impair the ethical conduct of HIV vaccine trials in Mali.

With your help, we have been able to support the treatment of HIV seropositive women and their families at the Hope Center Clinic and at “Chez Rosalie”, our successful mother-to-child HIV transmission prevention (MTCTP) program, since 2005! We have established strong local and regional partnerships in Mali, performed vaccine readiness research, and implemented a comprehensive HIV care program in anticipation of performing HIV vaccine trials.

With approval from the Malian Ministry of Health, GAIA VF has addressed the issue of access to care by setting up a model village-based HIV care and treatment clinic. The Hope Center Clinic now features HIV case management, outreach to identify new patients, referral to care, and promotion of medication adherence. GAIA VF also partners with local organizations to improve access to specialty HIV care at the clinic.

Our goal is to leverage innovative HIV management techniques, expand HIV treatment, and increase HIV knowledge in order to improve access and adherence to care, a model that could be implemented to expand village-level HIV care throughout West Africa.

Coup d’Etat in Mali

Unfortunately, 2012 was also the setting for a military coup, which took place in Mali in March. While there is ongoing civil unrest in the northern part of the country, our onsite director Dr. Karamoko Tounkara reports that all is calm in Mali’s capital of Bamako. Our patients and staff are safe, as are GAIA VF’s collaborating scientists.

In spite of this unrest, we are still providing access to HIV testing, care, and prevention, as well as food for HIV-infected patients, at our clinic in Sikoro. While we have had to reduce the scope of our programs to cut costs, the current political crisis has had no other impact on our activities at the Hope Center Clinic.

Although circumstances have been hard, enrollment in the MTCTP program has been steady over the past months. Voluntary HIV testing requests have skyrocketed in the past year, increasing from 226 in 2011 to 412 in 2012! This reflects not only GAIA VF’s resilience in keeping its programs open when other programs were forced to close due to the current political turmoil, but also an awareness and appreciation for the services provided by our clinic. We believe that continuing to operate our programs will instill hope in the citizens of Mali to sustain them through these difficult times.

Our Malian collaborators are continuing the fight against AIDS, and we need to bolster their optimism that peace and prosperity will be restored. More than ever, GAIA VF, our staff, and our patients need our, and your, support.

HIV Care Program

Since the launch of our antiretroviral (ARV) access program in 2009, more than 200 patients have enrolled in care at the clinic. In the past 2 years, GAIA VF was able to reduce the cost to patients of HIV screening and provide supplies and material for HIV screening activities. We reinforced our staff to levels appropriate for management of persons living with HIV/AIDS and hired a full-time pharmacist (full-time) trained in the management of care for HIV-positive patients, as required by the government of Mali.

2011-2012 Hope Center Clinic Achievements

438 Voluntary HIV test requests

221 HIV-infected adults and children in care

42 HIV-infected children in care

118 New HIV-positive patients on treatment

1040 Meals distributed to our patients

Hope is a Vaccine Award Dinner

Dr. Myron Cohen and Dr. Julio Montaner were awarded the 2012 International Hope is a Vaccine award for their ardent support of the “Treatment as Prevention” approach to ending AIDS, in the absence of an effective vaccine. The National Hope is a Vaccine award was given to Jon Cohen (correspondent with Science) for covering HIV/AIDS from every angle, and the Local Hope is a Vaccine award winner was Dr. Paul Loberti for his unfailingly devoted advocacy of HIV prevention as a means of addressing the HIV epidemic. Our 2012 awards attended the World AIDS Conference in Washington DC and gathered for a friendly award dinner together with Congressman David Cicilline.

Treatment as prevention: “The new vaccine for AIDS?”

The GAIA Vaccine Foundation held a satellite session at the AIDS Vaccine Conference in Boston in September 2012. Guest speaker (and 2012 Hope is a Vaccine Award winner!) Dr. Myron Cohen discussed the potential for implementation of the “Treatment as Prevention” (TasP) approach to ending AIDS, in the absence of an effective vaccine. Dr. Zoumana Koty, our Malian HIV specialist, was the recipient of both a scholarship and a travel grant, enabling him to attend the conference and present his work on improving clinical outcomes for HIV-positive patients at the Hope Center Clinic in Mali.

December 1st is World AIDS Day!

Your support for GAIA could not be more important than it is right now – we cannot continue without your help. Help us preserve our HIV care, treatment, and education programs in Mali! Please stand strong with GAIA VF and make a donation today.

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Jun 1, 2012
Ongoing programs despite civil unrest in Bamako

By Mali Rochas | Executive Director

As you know, a military coup took place in March 2012, and there is ongoing civil unrest in Bamako. The US embassy remains open, but Peace Corps volunteers have been withdrawn. Accordingly, we have reduced our own presence in Bamako to the minimum; however, we remain committed to continuing support of access to HIV care at the village level, which – in this time of unrest – remains a significant, if not more critical need.

We compiled the results of our work over the past four months in order to measure the impact of the political crisis on our activities at the Hope Center Clinic. Our monthly reports show that in spite of the difficult circumstances:

1) 150 pregnant women on average are still getting tested monthly. Enrollment in the PMTCT program has been steady over the past four months.

2) 30 families are still receiving nutritional support every week. Enrollment has been steady over the past four months.

3) 40 babies are currently being followed.

4) 55 patients on average are coming for voluntary HIV testing every month. Enrollment has skyrocketed in the past four months, increasing from 47 in January 2012 to 83 in April 2012. This increase in voluntary testing shows that our reputable management techniques and efforts to provide free high quality HIV care are reliable.

Our onsite director, Dr. Tounkara Karamoko, also said that significantly more HIV tests have been requested recently by people living in surrounding communities due to the closures of medical infrastructure and clinics in the past weeks.

Despite ongoing unrest in Mali, we remain committed to supporting humanitarian aid and preserving the program that has been one of the most successful interventions in Mali, over the last 10 years. We believe that it is critically important, at this juncture, to sustain hope. We must encourage our Malian colleagues to continue to fight against AIDS, and buttress their optimism that peace and prosperity will be restored.

Thank you!

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Mar 12, 2012
"Imagine this": Words from a GAIA volunteer.

By Shahla Yekta | GAIA volunteer

Imagine this: You are on your way to have lunch with the women of Sikoro. The walk from the modestly furnished house that GAIA rents to Sikoro will take you about 45minutes. The heat will have you drenched within minutes -no matter the time of the day- and you will have to share the road with cars, motorcycles, donkeys, cows, goats and people, as there are no sidewalks. Along the way, you will wave at the children and their mothers, who walk -often long distances- with an infant on their back, a basket on their head, a bucket in one hand, an older child’s hand in the other. You will reply to the many hellos thrown on your way by passersby and people sitting on the sides of the road, and forget the physical discomfort ever more with every smile, exquisite and contagious, belonging to some of the poorest people on the planet.

Soon, you too will fall in love with them, as did I. You will fall in love with the children who want you to touch their little hands and remember them forever by taking their photographs; with the ladies braiding each other’s hair in the afternoon heat, calling out that they love you and kissing your hands. You will fall in love with the men, sitting in the shade of a rare tree, listening to the radio, inviting you for a cup of tea. So for a moment, you will forget about their torn, dirty clothes, their bare feet and their scars. It’s as if they have everything in the world.

When you finally reach the Centre de Santé Communautaire de Sikoro - the clinic that offers basic health care services to the community - you will be greeted by fruit vendors sitting outside the clinic’s walls, selling the few seasonal fruits available. It’s Friday, and the women have will have already started cooking. This is a weekly culinary activity, funded through GAIA, by HIV positive women for HIV positive women and their children. A group of more than 20 women and children will be sitting in a corner of the clinic’s courtyard, taking turns stirring the food in a large pot over a pile of wood on fire. The children will be playing or in their mothers’ arms, some asleep despite the heat and the noise. They will immediately signal for you to join them and make space on the crammed benches.

Attachments:

Kids.pdf (PDF)

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