DREAM has been present in Guinea for more than 10 years in the fight against AIDS. DREAM’s approach has always been to put the patient first, man and woman not as a disease, but as a person, each with their own needs and characteristics. The treatment of AIDS and its subsequent related diseases has allowed many people to understand how it is possible to live a good life even with AIDS, and women to give birth to healthy children and to preserve their energy in order to take care of them. The focus on women is a priority for many reasons, both because they are the first victims of the disease (more than half of the patients are women), and also because through her, most aware of the responsibility towards her family, it is possible to reach the family unit, the children and finally the partners.
From this mutual focus on women’s health an alliance with the Veronesi Foundation emerged, which allowed the training of a specialized doctor for diagnosing breast cancer and the obtaining of an ultrasound machine, equipped with probes suitable also for other tests.
Diagnostics in Guinea is expensive and hard to come by. Therefore in view of DREAM 2.0, the doctors working in the DREAM centers had the chance to work with the machine and open new opportunities of offering their patients more possibilities of diagnosis and treatment.

After having verified the conditions of the ultrasound machine, all doctors working in the center were recruited for a theoretical and practical course on the machine.

The procedure included a pre- and post-test to evaluate the impact of the theoretical presentation, but above all the interest towards this innovative form of diagnostics in our centers.

There was great enthusiasm and, after a thorough explanation of the device, everybody has the chance to personally test its use both in the role of operators and patients.

This brief course was enough to highlight how frequent are thyroid problems in Guinea. In fact in the screening carried out during the course, of two members of the personnel familiar with thyroid problems, one is positive and one is negative to the presence of alterations. Training for the use of this diagnostics device will continue over the next months, focusing especially on the screening of female cancer.

DREAM 2.0 continues to expand its diagnostics capability for the overall handling of patients, with the best devices and thanks to the support of expert partners such as the Veronesi Foundation.