The IAS Educational Fund organizes country and regional meetings that place the latest science presented at international conferences into local contexts. Since 2016, the Educational Fund has convened 50 meetings, mostly in low- and middle-income countries, for health and social service providers, researchers, policy makers and key community actors. Meet a participant and hear about how attending affected them personally and informed their work in the HIV response.
“These exchanges strengthened my conviction about the value of dialogue between scientists and community actors.”
Djibril Sy, President, SOS Pair Educateurs (SOS PE), Mauritania
Meetings in the MENA region (2017, 2021)
My participation in the IAS Educational Fund meetings in Casablanca in 2017 and online in 2021 was profoundly enriching. It allowed me to share community-led advances in Mauritania, particularly the introduction of HIV self-testing and community-based screening. These exchanges strengthened my conviction about the value of dialogue between scientists and community actors. Presenting our results and learning from regional experiences broadened my perspective on integrating community services into the national health system – a reality today, with our association’s offices in four regions now based in public health facilities.
Since participating, I have continued to integrate community-based screening into public health structures in Mauritania, advocated for the recognition of community HIV care units (known in French as UPEC), and supported the capacity building of association workers. Through the IAS Educational Fund meetings, I gained the scientific evidence and regional examples needed to strengthen my advocacy with the Ministry of Health, which contributed to the opening of the country’s first community HIV care unit. These meetings also nourished our combination prevention strategy, now nationally recognized, and enabled SOS PE to strengthen its technical and institutional partnerships.