ICASA Conference: Young scientists to be rewarded

Rumbidzayi Zinyuke-Senior Health Reporter

With less than 30 days before the International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) to be held in Zimbabwe, the spotlight has been cast on the country’s excellent research prowess as three young scientists will be recognised for their outstanding research work at the premier event.

Zimbabwe will be hosting at least 8 000 delegates who will attend the conference from December 4 to 9 this year.

Addressing a pre-conference media briefing yesterday, Health and child Care Minister Dr Douglas Mombeshora said the country was ready to host the event where research will take centre stage.

“We are proud that Zimbabwe will be hosting this very important conference. We have strengthened the health delivery and surveillance systems to ensure that our visitors and locals have access to needed health services,” he said.

He said the achievement of the UNAIDS 95,95,95 targets to end Aids by 2025 was a testimony of the great work being done locally.

ICASA scientific committee chairperson Professor Mike Chirenje said numerous scientists had submitted their work in HIV research.

“The whole purpose of having a scientific committee is to really put up a robust scientific programme which is convincing and attractive. We put out a call for abstracts and these are driven by the fact that there is ongoing research. When we get these abstracts we look at them thoroughly and they are put in thematic areas starting from basic science all the way to clinical medicine and public health and we sit as a committee to select the best,” he said.

“It is rigorous, so when we say we have one of the best programmes for HIV prevention and control, we really mean it. Our young scientists will be awarded. We have a merit system and there are about six best abstracts that we selected and I am pleased to say that three of them are from Zimbabwe and they will be rewarded so that tomorrow they will be the leaders of science.”

Almost 735 speakers have been lined up to speak at the conference with specific speakers expected to look at scientific research that has been done.

ICASA director Mr Luke Bodea said a session had been dedicated to researchers who had discovered the malaria vaccine and how the same could be applied in the HIV research.

“The country is well prepared to host the 22nd edition of the ICASA. To date we have 3 000 confirmed delegates but we expect that soon we will have more delegates signing up. We are expecting to host a minimum of 245 sessions and 735 speakers for the programme. At the opening session we will have one of the researchers talking about how they discovered the malaria vaccine,” he said.

While research continues with other malaria vaccines, there has been success with a malaria vaccine which has shown high efficacy rates.

Meanwhile, there is still to be a breakthrough in the research on HIV vaccines although continuous research and clinical trials are being conducted.