During January, 2004, GAIA VF opened Chez Rosalie, a mother-to-child transmission prevention (MTCTP) clinic in Sikoro. Proving that MTCTP is feasible in this setting – is “Engendering Hope”. To date, we have tested more than 1,000 women and provided the HIV transmission prevention medications that they need.
GAIA VF provides free medications, rapid HIV tests, infant formula and condoms to the Chez Rosalie clinic. Additionally, GAIA VF also provides medical training for midwives, nurses and physicians working in the clinic.
In the summer of 2007 GAIA will begin construction on the Hope Center Clinic in Sikoro, Bamako. The Hope Center Clinic will be a permanent clinical HIV care center. The entire village of Sikoro, a peri-urban village in Bamako, Mali, West Africa, will be involved in this effort. The villagers and our GAIA volunteers will begin to build the clinic at a dedicated site in June. By the Fall of 2007, the Hope Center Clinic will be providing HIV prevention, education and care, acting as a beacon of hope for west African people who are burdened by AIDS, and where, when it is ready, we'll be doing a trial of our GAIA HIV Vaccine in the future.
This new clinical HIV care center in an impoverished neighborhood in Bamako
will facilitate the delivery of ARV (antiretrovirals) for as many as
800 infected children and their parents. Most of the supplies will be
provided at no cost or at reduced cost, using GAIA VF funds to leverage
access to life-saving antiretrovirals (ARVs) from the government and
treatment for AIDS-related opportunistic infections from pharmaceutical
company donation programs. As you know, Malians have limited access to
these life-saving drugs due to restricted access to HIV testing and the
lack of clinics that provide HIV care. GAIA VF is motivated to
establish this clinic as a model for "communal self-care" that may be
replicated in other neighborhoods in Bamako, and the rest of Mali,
should this clinic be successful. Thus, future beneficiaries will also
include all HIV-infected children and their parents in the rest of West Africa.
The Hope Center clinic will be fully integrated into GAIA VF's ongoing "Prevention Now!" campaign in Mali.
GAIA VF believes that active, ongoing collaboration with West African
physicians and support for clinical activities in the region will
improve the health of West African children and their parents, and
foster the development of the type of regional knowledge base and level
of care that is needed to pursue ethical HIV vaccine trials in the
region.