By Kingsley Obom-Egbulem

AIDS activists in Cross Rivers State as well as People Living with HIV, Heads of NGOs and other key players in the AIDS response in Cross Rivers State recently had the opportunity of getting acquainted with latest updates on microbicides clinical trials and research.

The platform was the 1st Calabar Microbicides Summit held at the Conference Hall of the Calabar Municipality and had representatives of the Cross Rivers State government and Programme Director of the Cross Rivers State AIDS Control in attendance.

Efforts to reduce HIV infection can be made easier with the development of microbicides – a new type of products being developed that women could use vaginally or rectally to protect themselves from HIV and possibly other sexually transmitted infections(STI’s).

Ironically, not everyone involved in HIV/AIDS programming-especially some medics have heard about microbicides.

The Calabar Microbicides Summit was aimed at bridging this knowledge gap.

“HIV and AIDS awareness programmes have concentrated in urban centres with little attention given to at risk populations within Sub-urban and rural communities”, said Margaret Onah, Executive Director, SafeHaven International-one of the organisers of the summit.

While issues such as female condom, Prevention of Parents to Child Transmission (PPTCT), microbicides and other new HIV prevention technologies have become long over used buzz words among programmers in urban areas, Onah said that their counterparts in rural and semi-urban areas are having difficulties catching up thus often appear as dinosaurs at major AIDS conferences and programmes.

“It is against this background that we are partnering with Health Communication and Development Initiative (HCDI) with funding from National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) to organize this summit which unarguably is the first within the South-South of Nigeria”.

With“Giving Women Power over HIV” as its theme the event was to sensitise participants on basic microbicides issues ahead of the International Microbicides Conference held in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania last month.

Drawing from the goals of the Global Campaign for Microbicides, the summit was aimed at creating a supportive policy environment for the timely development, introduction and use of new prevention technologies as well as ensuring that as science proceeds, the public interest is protected and the rights of and interest of trial participants, users and communities are fully represented and respected.

“We also hope that this summit would have equipped participants with specific ways that they can become more involved with the larger biomedical HIV prevention research field and we hope it set the stage for facilitating engagements and interactions between the Nigerian research community and the civil society especially in the South-South geo-political zone of Nigeria”, said Kingsley Obom-Egbulem, Chief Creative Officer, HCDI

The summit was unanimous in endorsing the notion that women are the most vulnerable to HIV infection and that several women have been infected by openly unfaithful partners and due to the African tradition very few of them have the social or economic power to negotiate condom use by partners deemed to be unfaithful.

Most participants hoped that a safe and effective microbicides be developed soon and when eventually developed will give women power to prevent HIV infection when condom use is not possible.