SITUATION: 33,000 doses de vaccin contre le VPH sont entrain de périr au Mali.

PROBLEME: En raison du conflit militaire au Mali, les fonds de l’Etat financent actuellement les interventions armées; Les vaccins ne peuvent donc pas être distribués !

INTERVENTION DE GAIA: En 2011, GAIA Vaccine Foundation a entamé une étude qui prouve que le vaccin est efficace et utilisable au Mali et que la population de la région de Bamako est favorable à l’introduction de ce vaccin. Nous avons sur place une équipe médicale prête à vacciner 11,000 adolescents – dans les conditions sanitaires requises bien sûr.

VOTRE INTERVENTION: Aidez-nous à vacciner ces adolescents! Notre vidéo vous endira plus long ! Aidez-nous à faire reculer le cancer de l’utérus au Mali !        Faites un don ici ! Merci.

GAIA VF a travaillé avec Eliza Squibb, une étudiante en art de la Rhode Island School of Design de Providence, pour la conception d’un bazin qui illustre la nécessité d’un vaccin contre le VPH et l’importance de se protéger contre le cancer du col. Le message “Je m’immunise, Je me protège, Je me soigne” est imprimé sur un dessin montrant des cellules saines à côté de trompes et cols sains également. L’équipe médicale en charge de vacciner les adolescents, portera ce tissu en l’honneur de la campagne de vaccination.

UN IMPACT IMMEDIAT: Avec votre aide, nous allons pouvoir vacciner 11,000 adolescents d’ici 3 mois ! Nous voulons les protéger du cancer et leur offrir un bel avenir.

S’IL VOUS PLAIT: Nous n’y arriverons pas sans votre aide ! Ces vaccins ne doivent pas rester entassés au fond d’un entrepôt. Quel gâchis ! Ils doivent être utilisés à bon escient ! 3 euros suffisent à vacciner une adolescente.  Imaginez les possibilités si vos dons atteignent 30 ou encore 300 euros.

IMPORTANT: Les vaccins sont périssables et le temps presse. Si nous ne les utilisons pas au plus vite ils seront perdus.

Vous trouverez des informations supplémentaires en première page de notre site web.

Un grand merci pour votre soutien !

 

2012 is GAIA Vaccine Foundation’s 10^th anniversary!  Please stand strong with GAIA VF and donate today.

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

MTCTP Program Evaluation

GAIA VF conducted a six-year retrospective assessment of its MTCTP program to evaluate its efficacy in preventing pediatric infections and providing services and support to HIV-positive women. Doctors and volunteers reviewed the maternity clinic’s patient charts to identify HIV-positive women enrolled in the MTCTP program for study participation. MTCTP acceptance, HIV transmission risk factors, and HIV seroprevalence among 150 babies born to mothers enrolled in the MTCTP program from 2005-2011 were evaluated by survey. The results of this evaluation were presented this year at the annual AIDS Vaccine Conference in Boston. GAIA counseled 9,379 women about HIV infection from 2005-2011 (average 145/month). An overwhelming majority (99.1%) of women agreed to HIV testing following counseling. 202 women (2.1%) were HIV positive, of whom 125 (61.9%) accepted MTCTP treatment. Notably, 100% of babies born at Chez Rosalie to MTCTP-adherent mothers were HIV free.

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 awardees 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 make a donation today.

Wednesday March 21^st: Renegade soldiers from the Malian military launched a coup d’état and attacked several locations in the capital city of Bamako, including the presidential palace, state television, and military barracks.

Thursday March 22^nd: The soldiers declared they had overthrown the government of President Amadou Toumani Touré, forcing him into hiding, and imposed a nationwide

curfew. Our onsite director, Dr. Tounkara Karamoko (Kara), texted me in the morning to let me know that he and the rest of our staff were fine. Kara informed me that all staff members were staying home for the day in order to be safe and to comply with the curfew.

Monday March 26^th:  Kara reported that during the weekend, few people had ventured outside of their homes and market activity had been very slow. As Monday was a national holiday, the people of Bamako continued to stay home in order to be safe.

Tuesday March 27^th:  Borders were opened, the curfew was lifted, and this was the first day that work resumed since the coup the week prior. It was a fairly typical Tuesday in Bamako: shops were open and filled with people, traffic downtown was heavy, and our GAIA staff and Malian collaborators were all hard at work: I received emails and updates from Ben Aboubacar (GAIA’s HIV consultant), Kotou Sangare (laboratory technician at the University of Bamako), and of course Kara. They all reported that the flow of activities at GAIA VF slowed down for a couple days but was never interrupted! Doctors at the Hope Center Clinic remained on call, the lab work related to our Merck IISP-sponsored study is ongoing, and Kara was already back on schedule, driving from one end of Bamako to the other to meet with our collaborators. From their reports, it sounds like everyone is safe!

April:  In the North of Mali, Tuareg rebels who have been seeking independence, overran Kidal, attacked Gao and by Monday, April 2nd, had overtaken Timbuktu. A good source of information about events in Northern Mali can be obtained by clicking here.

Meanwhile, Karamoko Tounkara, M.D., our director in Bamako, and consultant Ben Aboubacar, M.D., report that all is calm in Bamako, the capital of Mali. Habib Koite, reached by text message, told us that there was nothing to worry about. Our patients and staff our safe, as are GAIA VF’s collaborating scientists.

We are in touch with our director daily. We watch, we listen, we read, and we weep. This is the last thing that an impoverished country like Mali needs – more disruption, disarray, and disorder. If Mali falls to a more conservative regime, and humanitarian aid is impeded, the lives of thousands of people who are now living just at subsistence level, will be at risk.

We remain committed to supporting humanitarian aid to Mali. We believe that we, as a people, must reach out to our Malian colleagues and sustain hope. We must encourage them, and buttress their optimism that peace and prosperity will be restored. And we must must work hard to convince goverments here and overseas that Mali is worth saving.

2011 Hope is a Vaccine Awards

The Hope is a Vaccine Award, awarded annually to deserving individuals working in the international, national and local fight against HIV/AIDS, highlights the important work done by individuals fighting AIDS and their contributions to improving HIV care for persons living at the margins. GAIA VF hopes that the award will shed light on the hard work done by courageous advocates, scientists, and policy makers, and that the award will encourage more individuals to be engaged in the fight against HIV/AIDS world wide.

International Hope is a Vaccine Award 2011: Dr. Myron Cohen and Dr. Julio Montaner

Dr. Myron Cohen is responsible for the publication of a landmark study in the New England Journal earlier this year that showed that treatment with AIDS drugs, known as anti retrovirals (ARV), effectively prevents HIV transmission. In the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) 052 study, individuals who received ARV treatment early in their infection were at least 96% less likely to transmit the virus to their sexual partners than those who started on drugs later. The reduction in transmission is due to lower amounts of circulating HIV in the infected patient, while they are on ARV treatment.

Continue reading →

The GAIA Vaccine Foundation “Hope is a Vaccine Award 2009″ will go to two visionary architects of global TB/AIDS Foundations, for their ability to identify public-private partnerships as one means of solving some of the worlds’ greatest health problems – access to AIDS care -and developing new TB vaccines.

Chief awardees: Global AIDS care visionary Ira Magaziner and Global TB vaccine visionary Carol Nacy

Hope is a Vaccine Award – HIV/AIDS Care Visionary and Architect – Ira Magaziner

More than 90% of the 33.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the world live in developing countries, where access to treatment is limited. For HIV-infected individuals, access to health care is life saving, whether in the U.S. or in the developing world, and there is no one who has worked harder at improving access to health care than Ira Magaziner, former advisor to the Clinton administration and chief architect of the Clinton HIV AIDS Initiative (CHAI). CHAI is working to close the access to care gap in developing world countries by negotiating lower prices for lifesaving antiretroviral treatment, and by working with governments to improve the national health care systems required to deliver crucial medicines. Ira Magaziner makes his home in Rhode Island when he is not travelling for the Clinton Foundation. Continue reading →

AIDS Walk 2009 took place on Sunday, October 25, 2009 starting and ending at Roger Williams National Memorial Park, on North Main Street, Providence. Hundreds of walkers raised money and gathered to walk the 3K route through parts of Fox Point and the East Side in Providence.

Thanks to all who walked with GAIA!!!

The annual Hope is a Vaccine awards ceremony and  fundraiser will be
held June 17th at the Providence Hotel. This annual gala raises funds
to support research on a novel AIDS vaccine which is based on the
principle that the HIV virus has one or many “Achilles’ Heels,” which
are vulnerable to attack by the human immune system. Funds also support
HIV Education, Prevention efforts, and Access to care programs in Mali
and Providence. In addition, the GAIA foundation will present the Hope
is a Vaccine award to the 2010 honorees. Please join us! The awards
presented will be:

International Hope is a Vaccine Award 2010: Michel Sidibé

Michel Sidibé is the Executive Director of UNAIDS, the Joint
United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. He has been the driving force
behind promoting universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care
and support at the global level. Mr. Sidibé is also calling for virtual
elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV by 2015. In
addition, Mr. Sidibé’s work has played a major role in reducing the
number of new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths by nearly 20%.
Fewer people are becoming infected with HIV and fewer people are dying
from AIDS, and 56 countries have reported a reduction in the rate of
new HIV infections this year. GAIA VF salutes Mr. Sidibé for his
leadership and courageous efforts to expand access to life-saving HIV
treatment to all individuals who are in need.

Continue reading →

HIV Care for the poorest of the poor

February 2, 2009. HIV Care at the village level.
GAIA Vaccine Foundation has received permission from the Malian
national AIDS agencies to establish the first HIV care TB/HIV outreach
program in a village clinic, located in Sikoro Mali. The new “Project Hope” HIV care center will open its doors on February 2, 2009.

Treatment
for HIV and TB in peri-urban Mali, West Africa is constrained by
extreme poverty and limited access to health care. Even though
treatment for TB and antiretrovirals is free or low cost, few
individuals are aware of the importance of treatment and even fewer
have access to the centers where these lifesaving medications are
distributed. Currently, only 18,000 of the estimated 180,000 Malians
living with HIV infection have access to HIV care. Continue reading →

November 24, 2008 (Providence, RI)
– In celebration of World AIDS Day, the Global Alliance to Immunize
against AIDS (GAIA) Vaccine Foundation will honor the humanitarian work
of seven noted HIV/AIDS advocates.

This year’s award recipients are:

• Daniel Halperin (Harvard University),
  for uncovering the connection between lack of circumcision and AIDS
  transmission and for advocating family planning and access to care as a
  low-cost means for stemming the spread of AIDS.
  Dr.
  Halperin has conducted epidemiological and ethnographic research for
  over thirty years on a number of health and sociocultural issues in
  Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions. Since
  completing his doctoral training in medical and cultural anthropology
  at the University of California, Berkeley in 1995, his work has mainly
  focused on the heterosexual transmission of HIV and other sexually
  transmitted infections. He has had extensive involvement in the design,
  management and evaluation of prevention, care and other HIV-AIDS
  programs, and continues to be actively engaged in collaborative
  endeavors with UNAIDS, WHO, CDC, UNICEF, Gates Foundation and other
  international partners in developing and disseminating policy-setting
  technical consultations, guidance documents, etc. Continue reading →