We were up with the sun this morning and ran out from the guest house where we are staying and along the red dirt track towards town. At the cliff drop, there was a beautiful view of the Niger and the flat lands beyond to the South. The river is wide, and brown, and overflowing. I have never seen Mali so green, and now I understand why it is so. This is the rainy season. This is rebirth, renewal and hope for plenty.
The path down the cliff was already full of people making the trek to the hospital at the top: women in long blue cloth dresses with ready smiles. Men in blue uniforms wearing the thinnest of flip flops picked their way down between the stones. At the break in the cliff we turned East. East towards Mopti, Timbuktu, and beyond.
Running along the top of the cliff is a joyful experience. We ran through thigh high lush grass (watch for snakes), the green contrasting with the red of the path at our feet. Below us Bamako was already vibrating. Cattle waited for market in a makeshift kraal. Green sojimas parked like patient sheep at the bus stop. A chorus of hammers marked the metal working shop. Corrugated metal shacks huddled at the market. The streets of the market were already full of people, the soccer games had started, and it was only 7 AM.
We are beginning day 2 of our visit. Yesterday we met with the head of UNAIDS, Dr. Jean Louis Ledeq. He promised his help with our HIV newsletter; we’ll be writing a grant that will be passed on through to the WHO. He was clearly impressed with young Malick Kone, our doctor-to-be who is heading the newsletter. We may have funds by November! And he promised to support another conference on HIV in Mali, saying that we had done a wonderful job with the last one, that we are filling a gap, bringing clinicians together with researchers and the clinic workers who are on the front line.
Today we go to USAID to talk about getting rapid HIV tests for “Chez Rosalie”, our new clinic for Mother to Child Transmission Prevention (MTCP). Later on we’ll be meeting with the NIH team to talk about pulling together the grant. Tomorrow we’ll go to the AIDS ward.
The best news of all, I think, is that the president has now issued an order to begin treating everyone with antiretroviral therapy (who need it). Malick carried a copy of the decree with him everywhere in his notebook, showing it proudly to anyone who cares to see. Funds from the global fund are flowing to Mali. There is hope for the future. Now the task ahead is to train the clinicians, to compress the 20 years of treatment experience we have had in the US and Europe and pass it on.
It is even more urgent, then, to build the infrastructure for good clinical treatment. That is why our newsletter that will help train physicians about HIV care on the front lines is so urgently needed. That is why setting systems in place to track the care of patients (Computers, Labtracker) like the ones we brought to CESAC, and Hopital Toure, and Hopital Point G are so desperately needed. That is why the study that Jessica Beckerman performed on “knowledge, attitudes and practices” related to HIV in Mali is so important. With good care in place, we can perform an ethical trial of our vaccine. Today we meet about doing just that. Though the vaccine has only just now been tested in mice, we need to plan for the future.
I am writing to give you this glimpse of green and growing in Bamako, and the work we’re doing and to thank you for all the hard work that you do, in the lab (testing epitopes and making the constructs) at EpiVax (designing the best possible vaccine) and on the board (providing the support for our work here in Mali). Everyone here, from clinicians to patients, appreciates the work that you do. Without your hard work, we would not be here participating in this rebirth and growth, we would not be bringing hope for the future.
Annie De Groot MD,
GAIA Scientific Director and Founder
The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University