Our first official activity in Kampala was to attend the 12th annual conference of the Uganda Society of Health Scientists. The focus of this conference was “The third decade of HIV/AIDS” and people representing institutions all over Uganda were here. Almost everyone in the conference was Ugandan, and actually, almost everyone there was also presenting a paper (except for us).
The conference basically consisted of a few keynote addresses and a flurry of abstract presentations. Each abstract presenter was given 10 minutes, and if he or she went over the allotted time, the MC would just start talking into the microphone. At the end of each presentation, the MC would announce exactly how many minutes the presentation took, and would either admonish or praise for roughly 2 minutes, reinforcing just how important brevity is.
At the end of each set of four or five abstracts, the presenters were all called up to the front to form a panel, to answer audience questions. I noticed that most of the questions asked tended to be critical of the methods, results, or interpretation of the work presented, which seemed a little different from how I’m used to seeing papers presented.
By the second round of presentations, I started to get worn out. I noticed that tea had been set up for tea time, but that wasn’t going to be for another hour, so I figured it would be wrong if I were the only person in the room to get up and serve myself tea. But I couldn’t sit still. Usually in this situation (like a Tanzanian college graduation, for example), I play a game called “Find the lady with the most ridiculous hat,” but no one fulfilled the entry requirement. I even tried to play hangman with my esteemed colleagues, but no one else was nearly as enthusiastic about this activity. So I shuffled through all my papers again and came across the brochure for the hotel hosting the conference, the Golf Course Hotel. According to the brochure, some must-see highlights include:
-A Helipad
-Café Pap
-A Skating Rick
The cover of the brochure even boasted a picture of the hotel with a photoshopped helicopter placed threateningly close to the penthouse rooms of the hotel. I think they just wanted to make sure that their guests know about the availability of their roof for crash landings, you know, just in case.
The rest of the conference was good, and we took some time to read the posters that had populated the walls during the break.
Some of the research included a study on HIV vaccines for babies whose mothers are HIV+. Another showed that formula feeding gave better outcomes than breastfeeding of infants with HIV mothers, which was interesting and possibly pivotal, even though WHO guidelines suggest exclusive breastfeeding and NO formula as a method of preventing mother-to-child transmission (I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but it works). Another talked about DOTS therapy (Directly Observed Therapy) for people with HIV and TB, and I’m starting to think I could use DOTS for taking my malaria meds. There was even one Ugandan researcher who worked with (at?) UW, but we never got a chance to talk to him. Maybe next year.
