Day 4 & 5 - Congres Medicale

The conference was really interesting. I really enjoyed hearing the Haitian presentations on HIV care, prevention of mother to child transmission, etc. There seem to be many NGOs here providing HIV & other pediatric care, and they are able to do things like TB prophylaxis for children of adults with TB. Haiti is an HIV vaccine study site and Dr Joseph provided an interesting overview of both the study (now stopped due to lack of efficacy) and the HIV vaccine process.

The medical congress was remniscent of being in Burkina Faso (though thankfully, the question period is less painful). We arrived around the scheduled start time, and things got rolling an hour or more later. Each speaker took more than their alloted time, so both days the conference finished 2 hours late.

I gave my talk - on the interaction between parasitic infections & HIV - in French, which was a little painful for me but I think went over well. It was intersting to review the topic in detail.

The congres was at the fanciest hotel in Haiti - perched on the top of a hill, the beautiful hotel was surrounded by lush gardens. Another world from the poverty below.