Two Ghanaian health experts, Dr Henry Nagai and Professor William Ampofo, have received an international award for their long years of support to the Society for AIDS in Africa (SAA) in the organisation of the International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA).
The two were among 14 others from Africa that received the awards at the opening of the Community Village of the ongoing ICASA 2025 that Ghana is hosting for the first time.
They each received a plague and certificate of recognition.
Dr Nagai is a seasoned public health physician scientist and International development advisor with over 25 years of experience in global public health practice.
His work integrates implementation science, systems science and clinical research to address priority health challenges including HIV, Tuberculosis, Neglected Tropical Diseases, Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) and immunisation.
Dr Nagai has served as advisor and member of the international steering committee of SAA, the custodian and organiser of ICASA, convenes of ICASA.
Professor Ampofo on the hand, was the former head of Virology Department at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, according to African Vaccine Manufacturing Initiative, he supervised the national laboratory network for testing across Ghana.
He has played a key role in strengthening disease detection capacity across ECOWAS countries, contributing to regional public health resilience and over the past 35 years, he has worked extensively with global health development agencies including WHO, Africa Centre for Disease Control, UNICEF, UNAIDS and GIZ.
Present at the programme were the Minister of Health of Zimbabwe, Douglas Mombeshora; SAA President, Dr David P. Parirenyatwa, the Director General of the Ghana AIDS Commission, Dr Prosper Akanbong and other members of SAA Executive board.
SAA Coordinator and ICASA Director, Luc Armand H. Bodea, explained that the awardees had for more than 20 years been at the background working with SAA in organising the conference, which is deemed the biggest in HIV and STIs on the continent.
He said since this year's ICASA, the 23rd edition, celebrates SAA and ICASA's 35th anniversary, they thought it wise to honour those individuals.
On the community village, Mr Bodea explained that bearing in mind that not everybody could pay to attend the conference, SAA created the village so that the community of the host country and the community outside could come and share knowledge and experience among themselves.
He said at this year's ongoing ICASA, the village had hosted more than 70 sessions.
"From the key populations to the sex workers, to the people living with HIV (PLWHIV), women aging with HIV, youth with HIV and AIDS, we had nine networking zones at the Community Village and those zones are interacting on a daily basis to share their experiences, talk about their status, talk about their challenges because the challenge that you are facing here, other people are facing in their country but maybe they have found a solution for that already. This is why we created the village," he said.
Village
He explained that the village was created so that anybody could walk in there to listen to the discussions and understand the fact that discrimination against PLWHIV was prohibited and it was not fair to discriminate.
He said HIV was no longer a deadly disease and the fact that somebody is HIV negative did not mean they were better than the person living with the disease.
"People should understand that nowadays, people who don't know their status are those that are really at risks. We need to fear them because if you dont know of your status, you can die of AIDS," he said.
He said science had advanced to such an extent that now PLWHIV take only a pill a day and they felt more comfortable.
Additionally, he said there were injectable too which is taking twice a year every six months that offered protection from the virus.
He urged people to come and learn of their status, get tested and know that if they have HIV, it was not the end of the world and that it was just like malaria.
