ISCTRC Conference discusses success of SOS
2009-10-21
Uganda’s President Museveni highlights success of the SOS programme in his opening speech to International scientific conference.
During his opening speech to the 30th. ISCTRC (International Scientific Council for Trypanosomiasis Research and Control) meeting held in Kampala during September 2009, President Museveni of Uganda made specific reference to the success of the SOS programme stating:
“Uganda has successfully halted the merger of the two forms of sleeping sickness through a public private partnership to implement a stamp out sleeping sickness (SOS) campaign”.
Further demonstrating their commitment to continuing the SOS
initiative, the Ugandan organising committee organised a roundtable
meeting of all interested stakeholders, including the local head
of delegation for WHO, many International institutes and
perhaps more importantly representatives from the affected local
communities, DVO's as well as all key government staff.
The meeting was chaired by Dr.Dawson MBULAMBERI and 4 members of
the partnership, Lawrence Semakula, COCTU, Professor Sue
Welburn, Edinburgh University, Professor Charles Waiswa, Makerere
University and Martin Mitchell, Ceva Sante Animale addressed the
roundtable giving different perspectives of what has been achieved
and what is left to do.

Lawrence Semakula, Commissioner, COCTU
As a result, a resolution was drafted later to be adopted by the
full scientific council recommending that:
- The SOS consortium should meet soon to work out details of
the next phase of the project.
- Based on lessons learnt from SOS consortium and arising out
of the need to move towards consolidating strategies for managing
trypanosomiasis in Africa, it is resolved that:
- Programmes promoting technologies that are currently easy
to adopt at community level be supported , strengthened , and
consolidated as the tsetse eradication campaign is to be
implemented
- In the mean time, these technologies, including among
others Live Bait Technologies, Community screening at village
level, utilization of trained personnel at community level (e.g.
village health teams, health assistants, nursing assistants,
assistant veterinarians and assistant agriculturalists etc.),block
treatment of animals should continue using the private
sector.
The partnership has been asked by the Ugandan authorities to
expand its work and hardly had "the dust settled" from the ISCTRC
conference, when Anne Rannaleet from IKARE arrived in Uganda to
discuss in detail how the programme might be "rolled out" into
phase 2.
The British Government through DFID (The Department For
International Development) has expressed strong interest in
participating in the next phase through its "Research into Use"
programme and it is hoped that we will soon be able to announce the
commitment of all partners to a new challenge.
Everyone associated with SOS is delighted by the recognition we
have been given for our efforts but more importantly we are humbled
that our small input has in someway helped the Ugandan people
themselves to avert this potentially disastrous situation.