Sam Banda Junior, Media Scholarship Recipient and Reporter for Blantyre Newspapers, Malawi, was able to experience a state of the art media centre for the first time at IAS 2011

This was my first time at an international HIV/AIDS conference and I am grateful for the opportunity I was given.
v This being my first experience of a large conference on HIV, I wanted to learn as much as possible about the latest findings in the HIV field. Also, I wanted to link up with fellow media representatives from other countries and get to know the state of the HIV epidemic in their regions.

As Malawi is one of the countries in the African continent with little access to ARV therapies, I wanted to hear from drug manufacturing companies what kind of initiatives they are undertaking to make ARVs more accessible.

Prior to the conference I took part in a media training organized by the IAS. Even though I would have loved to have had a longer training given the amount of topics to cover, the training did give us some insight into the conference and its presentations. We also had the opportunity to listen to some experienced journalists such as Bob Meyers of the National Press Foundation (NPF) and Richard Ingham of the Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Most of the newsrooms in Africa have problems with access to the internet and during the conference I was given a chance to sample for the first time a state of the art media centre.

During the conference I assisted in several sessions on studies carried out in Malawi about contraceptive eligibility and choice and acceptance of the copper intrauterine device (IUD) among HIV positive patients at an ART clinic in the city of Lilongwe.There was also another presentation regarding the prevalence of multi-drug resistant mycobacterium tuberculosis (MDRTB) among patients admitted to the Bwaila – Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) inpatient tuberculosis ward in Lilongwe.

I have closely followed the drug injection emergence in Malawi (published in a study by American professor of Epidemiology, Chris Beyer) and the story has since been published in Malawi’s Daily Times.

Overall, I would say that this scholarship has changed my professional life and has given me the skills for effectively and efficiently reporting on HIV/AIDS.


IAS 2011 brought science to life for International Scholarship Recipient Giulia Della Chiara

The conference was well organized and packed with sessions covering every aspect of the HIV field. The most interesting part of this meeting was the opportunity to attend sessions not only dealing with basic science but also with epidemiology and sociology of the HIV virus infection.

For me that was the highlight of the conference because, while most of the meetings attended by basic researchers deal just with basic and clinical science, the IAS conference puts the scientist into a more real and tangible reality.

The conference also gave the opportunity to scientists from other areas apart from the basic field to understand problems related to the HIV-1 reservoirs. Indeed a beautiful session held on the last morning showed all the main difficulties in completely eradicating the HIV-1 infection, due to the inefficacy of the HAART therapy to affect cellular viral reservoirs.

Thanks to this scholarship, I had a lot of opportunities for scientific and cultural exchanges with the other scholarship recipients. This gave me the chance to understand what kind of research is being pursued in different parts of the world in the HIV field.


Dr. Nancy Leticia Ramos Aragón from Hospital Nacional Saldaña went back home with more energy to effectively respond to San Salvador’s HIV epidemic

I work as a pediatrician at a National General Hospital (Hospital Nacional Saldaña) in San Salvador and as a health worker focused on child care, it is impossible not to be sensitive.

When I applied for a scholarship for IAS 2011, I was full of hope and when the scholarship team contacted me with the good news I felt incredibly lucky.

Now, after the conference, I can say that I feel not only lucky but also extremely satisfied. For the first time I had the chance to see with my own eyes how people around the world respond to the HIV epidemic and how much hard and good work has been done so far. I was also impressed by the amount of data presented at the conference.

After the conference I came back to my country with more energy and with the sense that in San Salvador we need to dramatically raise the level of our research to the same level of other countries if we want to be able to respond to the HIV virus in an efficient way.

Meeting and sharing information with professionals from other countries has been a great experience and visiting the city of Rome and its pediatric hospital, the “Bambin Gesu’” was the icing on the cake.

This scholarship has immensely contributed to my professional growth and for that I have to thank the conference organizers. Now, it is my duty to share this knowledge with my community and encourage colleagues to take action in the response to HIV/AIDS.


Musa Otieno Ngayo was granted the IAS/ANRS Young Investigator Award for her abstract “Association of abnormal vaginal flora with male-to-female HIV-1 transmission among HIV-1 discordant couples in sub-Saharan Africa”

I have been enthusiastic about contributing to the Scientific Programme Committee of IAS conferences by providing critical abstract reviews since 2006. However, the conference in Rome was to the first IAS conference I attended and I was delighted to share an aspect of the helpful and exciting research activities in which I am currently engaged in Kenya.

The nomination of our abstract for the 2011 IAS/ANRS Young Investigator Award was not only a tremendous honor for my teams’ work but also an indicator that the very basic research activities done in resource limited nations using conventional techniques such as Gram Stain still has an impact in the current scientific world.

This award was for work that I feel passionately about, yet this condition is rarely given the attention it deserves considering its implication on the epidemiology of HIV/AIDS. In Africa, the region most affected by the HIV-1 pandemic, the majority of new HIV-1 infections occur in women. Apart from the biological behavioral and socioeconomic factors, the disturbances of the normal vaginal flora contribute substantially to the population-level risk of HIV-1 acquisition.

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) (Nugent's score 7-10), the extreme end of abnormal vaginal flora is a common disorder characterized by changes in vaginal flora in which normally predominant Lactobacillus species are replaced by potential pathogens including Gardnerella vaginalis, genital Mycoplasma and fastidious anaerobic bacteria. BV is more common among women from developing countries and it has been associated with a 60% increased risk of HIV-1 acquisition in women.

In this study we measured the effect of abnormal vaginal flora (Nugent's score 4-10) compared to normal vaginal flora (Nugent's score 0-3) on male-to-female HIV-1 transmission risk in a prospective study of African HIV-1 serodiscordant heterosexual couples recruited from seven east and southern African countries (Kenya, Uganda, Botswana, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa). Participants were followed for up to 24 months; vaginal Gram stains obtained every three months were evaluated using Nugent's criteria. Our study demonstrated that women who had abnormal vaginal flora had an increased incidence of HIV-1 even after adjustment for the confounding factors.

I am very glad to experience IAS 2011, and it was extremely exciting to stand on stage at the plenary session with Elly Katabira, President of the IAS, and Jean-Francoise Delfraissy, the Director of the French National Agency for Research on AIDS and viral hepatitis (ANRS). The applause from the international community of researchers and policy makers was a great honor for me and I hope to live up to their high expectations.


Christophe Vanpouille, NIH/NICHD and International Scholarship Recipient, improved his knowledge of HIV biology and transmission, viral reservoirs, latency and persistence and immunoactivation as assistant rapporteur for Track A

Attending IAS 2011 as an International Scholarship recipient was one of the greatest professional experiences I have ever had.

I was lucky enough to be selected by Dr. Giulia Marchetti, the Rapporteur of the Track A, Basic Science, to work as her assistant. My job consisted of assisting specific sessions and writing summaries that were posted daily on the conference website. The main topics I covered regarded HIV biology and transmission, viral reservoirs, latency and persistence and immunoactivation related to the progression of the disease.

As a young scientist, I found this task extremely beneficial as it was a “fun” way to learn and keep myself up to date with the latest discoveries in the HIV field, especially with the case of the promising findings linked to the “treatment as prevention” approach.

Another exciting, though a little more daunting, part of my experience at IAS 2011 was my role as co-chair, along with Dr. Mark Wainberg, of the oral poster discussion session “Drug development and resistance”. Each speaker was given five minutes to present their work, followed by a 30-minute moderated discussion Mark and I had to lead. This was not a simple task for my first time as co-chair as we had to “engage” people for 30 minutes once the talks were done.

Again, this experience was just wonderful and something I look forward to experiencing again in the near future. The talks were scientifically exceptional, and I believe we had a dynamic interaction that hopefully had a positive impact on the session.

Attending the 6th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention was an incredible experience for me. Once I came back I realized how much the three days of the conference will forever impact my scientific career in the HIV field.

I have to thank the IAS scholarship programme for this because, without that support, I wouldn’t have been able to take part in the conference due to budget restrictions