Events
This year’s Research to Best Practices Conference on AIDS in Malawi is scheduled to take place on 24th November 2016, in Lilongwe. It is convened by the National Aids Commission with AFIDEP as one of the participating organisations. Dr. Abiba Longwe-Ngwira, Knowledge Translation Scientist, will represent AFIDEP. She will lead the first plenary session on “Integrating Evidence in the Decision Making Process” following the opening ceremony.
The Guest of Honour at the Conference will be Dr. Charles Mwasambo, the Chief of Health Services. The Executive Director of the National AIDS Commission, Mr. David Kalomba, will make keynote remarks. The one-day Conference will begin with a plenary session in the morning, parallel sessions will follow in the late morning and early afternoon and poster presentations in the late afternoon before the official closing ceremony scheduled for 16.30 hours. Parallel sessions will focus on HIV Prevention, Treatment Care and Support and Programme Coordination.
According to UNAIDS Gap Report 2016, Malawi’s HIV prevalence is one of the highest in the world, with 10.3 percent of the population living with HIV. Malawi accounts for 4 percent of the total number of people living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. An estimated 1 million Malawians were living with HIV in 2013 and 48,000 Malawians died from HIV-related illnesses in the same year. The Malawian HIV epidemic plays a critical role in the country’s low life expectancy of 54.8 years. The number of new HIV infections has however dropped drastically from more than 120,000 in 2000 to 33,000 in 2015.