SCI News
SCI has received another grant from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
($10 million). This grant is for integration of control activities and
will be considered as co-funding to the RTI grant activities. SCI will
be needing additional staff in the new year.
During the last few months there has been considerable travel with Alan
and Howard visiting Cameroon to attend an APOC meeting (more
integration) and then joining Elisa in Niger and Burkina Faso. In Niger,
Alan and Howard received medals of honour from the Minster of Health as
a thank you for the SCI contribution to the Ministry activities. Both
Burkina and Niger are now preparing integration plans for funding by the
USAID project through SCI. Uganda are doing the same, and Fiona Fleming
went to Uganda in October to assist the planning.
Lynsey Blair has been appointed SCI programme manager to Ghana in
preparation for USAID funding the integrated disease control programme
there and she will work with local ITI staff on development of control
plans.
The other country which will benefit from the USAID grant is Mali, and
Howard and Elisa will visit this country soon to start planning for
integration there.
Yaobi Zhang is in Niger this month to oversee some follow up data
collection. He is preparing the timetable for the next B.Sc. course.
Alan, Lynsey and Fiona attended a meeting on the new USAID project at
RTI, Washington on Wednesday October 25th, and then the George
Washington University workshop on NTD's October 26th and 27th. This
included a description of the new network (www.gnntdc.org) and the new
publication of the "Guidelines for chemotherapy of NTD's" published by
WHO.
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