Addis Ababa, 11 March 2010:- The countdown to the 16th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) 2011 has begun. The conference is scheduled to be held from 4 – 8 December 2011 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Society for AIDS in Africa’s (SAA) high profile delegation expressed satisfaction at the progress Ethiopia is making in the preliminary preparation for hosting the next ICASA.
Close to 10,000 people are expected to attend this conference.

“I am impressed at the dedication, hard work and commitment [shown by the organizers]…I am convinced that if the level of commitment is maintained, Ethiopia will give us and the world the best ICASA ever held on African soil,” Dr. Femi Soyinka, former President of SAA wrote in his letter to the organizing committee.
A delegation from SAA visited Ethiopia earlier this month to meet with the Local Organizing Committee of ICASA.  The SAA delegates and the Local Organizing Committee met on 7 – 8 February 2010 to discuss the preparations made so far for the ICASA conference.
The visiting delegates provided the committee with technical advice and shared best experiences from other countries that previously hosted the conference.  They also raised relevant issues that Ethiopia would have to address in hosting ICASA.
The SAA has successful carried out fifteen ICASAs which have taken place in twelve African countries and three countries in Europe. The last conference conducted in 2008 in Dakar, Senegal attracted over 10,000 participants.
H.E. Dr. Kebede Worku, the State Minister of the Federal Ministry of Health, expressed Ethiopia’s commitment to making the next ICASA successful and a pivotal conference in the history of HIV/AIDS and STIs. “We are also ready to take up the challenge of bringing in new issues such as malaria and TB to the conference,” says Dr. Kebede.
Ethiopia was selected to host ICASA 2011 after a rigorous evaluation of various countries that bid to host the conference.  The SAA expects that holding ICASA in Ethiopia will help to motivate African governments to devote more attention and commitment to the fight against HIV/AIDS and other health related issues and to improve the well being of African populations.
 

Source: http://icasa2011addis.org/