HIV/Aids, is there still hope in Africa ?
The opening session of the DGfZ was dedicated to talks and discussions about the three most disastrous diseases in the world: tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/Aids. Two deeply involved scientists agreed to give an overview about the actual problems which are predominant in the developing world, where access to scientific advances and therapies is difficult. Our guests were Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Göhde, Germany and Prof. Dr. Yves Traoré from the Université de Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
Their talks presented a topic already discussed at the ISAC conference in Quebec following the ” one of the most emotive and personally challenging lectures” held by Stephen Lewis. A general question of how improving a technique might improve the ability of fighting infectious diseases in Africa (cytometry for life), lowering the price of the reagents (mAB CD4) being one of the first steps. As always it takes hands and hearts to do it and people that do not “think big” but “think simple”, which is in no way related to “being easy”. Prof. Göhde and Prof. Traore simply went out and started to solve the problems were they are, in Africa.
Recent publications from the World Health Organization presented the following statistics for the three endemic and frightening diseases: There are 60 million infected people with HIV/AIDS, 2 billion infected tuberculosis individuals and more than 300 million person infected with the malaria parasites. Although AIDS is a relatively young disease which was discovered first time in 1981 the two other diseases are long since known and were already described and treated by Robert Koch and Luis Pasteur around 100 years ago. However, as it turns out over the years the virus and the microorganisms had special defence mechanisms and virulence strategies which are not known from other human pathogens. This made research and treatment of infected people difficult and the question remains:
The Prize is dedicated to award a young scientist for a scientific work out of the wide field of Cytometry which appears outstanding both in scientific quality and innovation as well as presentation and layout. As every year since 1996 the DGfZ awards a young scientist with the Klaus-Goerttler-Prize, which goes along with prize money of 1000 €. The award is named after Prof. Klaus Goerttler, a retired Pathologist and trend-setting member of the foundation board of our society.