17 public health experts from 9 African countries, including Benin, Rwanda, Cameroon, Senegal, Guinea, DRC, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Mali are gathered in Bamako for the DIAMA 4th Annual Consortium Meeting-Diagnostics project for multidrug resistant tuberculosis in Africa.
This meeting, which is held from June 12th to 14th in the Malian capital city, precisely at Azalai Grand Hotel, is organized by the University Clinical Research Center (UCRC) and the HIV / AIDS and Tuberculosis Research and Training Center (SEREFO). . It aims to evaluate the actions taken and to reflect on the next steps in the implementation of the project.
At the opening ceremony, Professor Mahamadou Diakité, Deputy Director of the UCRC, representing the Rector of the University of Sciences, Technique and Technology of Bamako (USTTB), welcomed the participants in African soil of Mali. He went on to say that for 100 years, tuberculosis has been a real public health problem in Africa and worsened in the 1980s with HIV. “Nowadays, no effective vaccine has been found,” he said.
For Professor Souleymane Diallo, Diama Project Principal Investigator in Mali, the importance of this project is clear to anyone when we know that this is the diagnosis and monitoring of patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis which is also a problem of public health in our country. In addition, this project has recruited full-time two of our elements and has just awarded a doctoral scholarship for a third, he added.
Started on May 31, 2016, the Diama project enrolled 1,500 patients in the 9 countries participating in this fourth annual meeting. However, it still faces enormous challenges in recruiting and implementing new tests, said Professor Dissou Affolabi, Diama Project Coordinator / Mycobacteria Reference Laboratory (MRL).
