Speech by: Dr. Tadesse Wuhib

Director, CDC Ethiopia

Her Excellency Netsanet Asfaw, State Minister of Information, Honorable Claude Allen, Deputy Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services, Mr. Negaru Mereke, Head, National HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Office, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

It gives me a great pleasure to be present here today – seeing a dream turned reality. We, at CDC, have been working on realization of this dream since we first came to Ethiopia for our first assessment visit.

In discussing with government and non-government authorities, two cross-cutting concerns were repeatedly mentioned. These were:

The need for accurate and up-to-date accessible information on HIV/AIDS, STDs, and TB; and
The need for coordinating efforts among all organizations working on HIV/AIDS.

It was to meet these two important needs that the idea of a Resource Center was conceived and pursued. We also engaged the best in the business for the task: Johns Hopkins University Centers for Communication Programs and Analytic Sciences Inc. to help put this into effect. These two organizations had successfully done the job for us in the United States.

When you visit the site later, you will see that we were correct in our judgment that they will do the same here. I think the resource center has already become the center with the largest collection of HIV/AIDS and related information in Ethiopia. I want to thank both of these organizations for all their hard work on the establishment of this Resource Center.

Effective dissemination of surveillance and other pertinent information regarding transmission, prevention, program development and lessons learned are important not only for program managers but also for those involved in advocating for expanded action and a broader societal response to HIV prevention. A resource center could ensure availability of high quality, culturally appropriate materials with consistent, timely and factually accurate information.

Moreover, the conference, funding, and organizational databases and information distribution network will serve us well as we try to coordinate our efforts, network among each other and avoid duplication of efforts in mounring an effective and resource-efficient response to the pandemic – all prerequisites to winning the fight against this scourge of our time. We look forward to the other future additions that are planned to be added: a hotline service, regional expansions, and journalist trainings, to mention a few.

The Resource Center belongs to all of us. It will be as good as what each one of us invests in it. I encourage all of you to invest in the resource center: sending us your news and events; contributing to and using the databases as you plan events or embark on new areas of interventions; joining the listserv and sharing your thought.

Finally, I wanted to thank all the organizations and individuals too numerous to mention individually that have contributed to the realization of this Center; we will count on all of you to sustain it.

Thank you.