Ok, we’re exhausted but exhilarated! We learned about PTME from Elizabeth Glaser Foundation, we heard about prison health care from former prisoners, we chanted as we marched down John street from Grange park “AIDS Treatment Now!” and the drums drummed and the cymbals clashed and we salsa’d and tangoed for the joy of it. Then we heard Helene Gayle, the conference organizer and her co-organizer Mark Weinberg (of Toronto) speak about delivering on promises (there are so many donors to the global fund who have failed to deliver) and, perhaps more important, a young woman living with HIV talk about the high barriers that exist to accessing funds to stop AIDS. We are full of new information and far from sated. This is what we came for. All of the complexity, all of the difficulties, and all of the joys of the struggle against AIDS. And there are many successes to talk about, ours is one of many.
Every small gesture counts, for it is the sum of those gestures that will end AIDS in our lifetimes.
Annie De Groot MD,
GAIA Scientific Director and Founder
The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University