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:

 

 

1. The SOS consortium should meet soon to work out details of the next phase of the project.
2. 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.