AIDS CONFERENCE TO FOCUS ON PREVENTION AND TREATMENT STRATEGIES

Caroline Bowley of Gender DynamiX will be attending the 18th International Conference on HIV/AIDS to be held in Vienna, Austria, which will take place from the 18th to 23rd of July this year. Although it’s main focus will be on Eastern Europe, prevention and treatment strategies in all other parts of the world will also be put under the spotlight. The conference will be co-chaired by Julio Montaner from Canada and Brigitte Schmied from Austria.
“The AIDS 2010 Conference Programme seeks to promote scientific excellence and inquiry, encourage individual and collective action, foster multisectoral dialogue and constructive debate, and reinforce accountability amongst all stakeholders,” the Programme Committee says on the AIDS 2010 website.
The programme includes sessions on the political costs of AIDS in Africa, global partnerships in AIDS vaccine research, conditional economic incentives for HIV prevention in the developing world, a new agenda for HIV prevention for young people, a human rights-based approach to prevention, the promise and perils of ARV-based prevention, the hidden crisis of HIV among street youth, optimising care for women and children to prevent paediatric HIV, and HIV-related stigma and discrimination.
A number of young people will also be at the conference to participate in a youth programme. The aim of the youth programme is to work to strengthen the participation of young people, and the profile of youth issues at the conference.
“Young people are greatly affected by AIDS. At least half of all new HIV infections in the world are among people under 25. Estimates show that more than 7,400 become infected with HIV daily, 3,300 of who are young people. Globally, 5.4 million young people are living with HIV of which 57.5% are young women under the age of 25,” AIDS 2010 says on its website (http://www.aids2010.org)
The 2010 Programme Committee, co-chaired by Diane Havlir from the United States, Robert Zangerle from Austria and Adeeba Kamarulzaman from Malaysia, is an international committee of experts and professionals with exceptional experience in their respective fields.
There will also be a session dealing with HIV/AIDS in the LGBTI as well as a discussion group on Transpolitics. Also of interest is an LGBT networking zone which will hopefully be created.
During the conference an international team of rapporteurs will prepare summaries of all sessions. Community leaders will also share their perspectives. Session reports and daily summaries in each track will be available online.

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