12
May
2008
12 - May - 2008
VI International Conference – COMMUNITY AND HEALTH: DREAM, A MODEL FOR AFRICA
During the International Conference, data, tables, histories and updating on AIDS situation in Africa and in the South of the world will be available. African and world-wide representatives, in charge to elaborate policies to fight AIDS, will be present. Programme results, the best ever obtained at international level on the pandemic contrast in Sub-Saharan Africa, will be make known.
More than one hundred activists, from ten African countries, will take part at the VI International Conference, "Community and health: DREAM, a model for Africa", which will take place in Rome next 15 May from 9 a.m. to 1.00 p.m. at the “Pontificia Università Gregoriana” – Conventions Center Matteo Ricci.
DREAM (Drug Resource Enhancement against AIDS and Malnutrition) is a global approach programme to treat AIDS in Africa launched in February 2002 by the Community of Sant’Egidio and currently present in ten African countries.
Excellence, accessibility and free of charge are the main DREAM Programme key words.
Communities involvement is one of the DREAM global approach centerpieces: activists are promoters of information campaigns thanks to their capillary presence in districts and villages, where there are still many persons that do not know the possibility to treat AIDS. Activists guarantee a constant presence in several DREAM centers in order to receive the infected persons that for the first time approach the programme and to offer them their own testimony.
Through constant home visits, beyond supplying the necessary human and psychological support, DREAM activists guarantee therapy’s monitoring. In the case of pregnant women, a nutritional education service is offered, correct meal preparation is taught for the weaning, the use of filters for the water is recommend, hygienic measures necessary to prevent the infections are taught.
"After starting the antiretroviral treatment and after founding again the strengths, a new life is begun, a new world has been open to me. I have started working as activist and today I feel happy for being able to even help my neighbors that accused me: “That one has the AIDS. Tomorrow she will be dead”. Today my neighbors call me "ambulance". When someone is bad, they knock to my door, every time, to ask for advices and aid. I have become a full time nurse."
This is Ana Muhai Maria’s history, one of the first DREAM patients in Mozambique. Today, with many others, she is a DREAM’s activist.
At the Conference there will be Ministers of the health or representatives of many African Countries: Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Guinea Conakry, Malawi, Madagascar, Cameroon, Gabon, Liberia, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Central Africa Republic.
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