Category: International AIDS Conference, August 2006
International AIDS Conference, Toronto: Girls, Women, and the Bills
Opening Plenary
The opening plenary session of the World AIDS Conference, 2006, Toronto featured two talks about the cutting edge of HIV. First, Chris Beyrer of Hopkins talked about the epidemic “news”, that is new information on individual and structural sources of HIV risk behaviors. He illustrated his point using several case studies. One of the case studies was Eastern Europe, where the epidemic is rapidly expanding due to individual actions (lack of condom use) and structural barriers to prevention (lack of access to information, to means of preventing transmission such as condoms, and the lack of needle exchange services for drug users. He stated that these means of prevention are clearly effective and supported by evidence, thus he called them “evidence-based” prevention methods. He noted that the expanding epidemic of HIV in Eastern Europe is also due to lack of access to means of prevention in prison settings, where HIV hits the hardest.
Toronto Rocks!
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.
Grandmothers are outraged and organizing!
Grandmothers are outraged and organizing! That’s the news today from Toronto, where more than 10,000 delegates from hundreds of countries are converging for this biannual event. A contingent of grandmothers from South Africa were amongst the first to arrive, and with T shirts that said “We’re Older, Bolder and we stand Shoulder to Shoulder” they protested the lack of support for the women who take care of the 13,000,000 AIDS orphans living in the world today. They sang, they chanted, and they marched, and GAIA Vaccine Foundation marched along with them in the bright morning sun to the conference center where the AIDS meeting is being held. We shared ideas about transforming grandmothers into advocates for HIV care in Mali, where we’ve set up a clinic for Mother to Child HIV transmission prevention and successfully engaged the community of Sikoro to support our mission – which will include training grandmothers for the children left behind by AIDS.
Other contingents that are represented here in Toronto include representatives of the Clinton Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and a myriad number of NGO’s (non governmental organizations) including GAIA Vaccine Foundation, of course.