The head of the Military Medical Academy, Col. Prof. Dr. Marijan Novaković, and the U.S. Ambassador Mary Warlick carried out the official ceremony of handing over $100000- worth of the U.S. Embassy’s donation to the MMA.

Present to the handover ceremony were the MoD State Secretary, Zoran Vesić and the head of the Military Medical Department, Brig.Gen. Veljko Todorović.

The donation of equipment and educational material is a part of the U.S. Department of Defense HIV/AIDS Prevention Program initiated with Serbian party in 2006.

The donation of the American colleagues, as the MMA’s head Col. Novaković said, is a part of the significant global HIV/AIDS Prevention Program, the U.S.A. have been implementing in over 80 countries throughout the world, among their respective Military Services, and Serbia is the only regional country involved in that Program.

’’It is extremely important that the United States, along with us, have recognized the significance of making, through education and training of relevant medical personnel, continuous efforts to prevent and control HIV/AIDS among the military population. According to the medical litearture, this population is considered to be at a considerable risk of acquiring HIV infection. It has also been estimated that, in peacetime, the risk of HIV infection for military personnel is twice higher when compared to the civilian population, and can be much higher in times of conflict’’, Col. Novaković said, and added that cooperation between the American and Serbian physicians established in the field of medicine dated back to 1980’s of the last century, when a large number of the MMA’s physicians was sent there for advanced training purposes. He also expressed his belief that joint work on that program, as well as in other fields of military medicine, would be continued in the future.

Speaking about the importance of today’s meeting, the ambassador Warlick stressed that the donation, featuring the state-of-the-art equipment for identifying the HIV virus, would help raise the consiousness about that virus among national military and civilian population.

’’This summer, the world marked the three decades since the first recorded case of HIV infection, and inspite of the presumption that the country such as Serbia is not facing the threat of HIV pandemic, it can only protect itself from that virus by raising the awareness and knowledge of its people’’, the ambassador Warlick said, and reminded that, within the U.S. Department of Defense HIV/AIDS Prevention Program, the U.S. had donated over 600 000 USD since 2006.

It is all about a global initiative within the framework of which the American Government has established cooperative relationships with the Armed Forces of the countries all over the world, with the aim of raising the general awareness level about HIV, and strengthening the capacities for HIV prevention, treatment and care. The support and assistance of that type is based on establishing labs for diagnosing and testing for HIV, training the medical personnel, and purchasing equipment for primary prevention.