Michel Sidibé, the Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations, one of the featured speakers at the XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C. this week, is calling for an end to HIV transmission from mother-to-child, which continues to occur hundreds of thousands of times a year.

Michel Sidibé, the Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations, one of the featured speakers at the XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C. this week has called for ending discrimination and stigma in order to confront HIV/AIDS worldwide.

When Sidibé came to the San Francisco Bay Area on a “listening tour” a few weeks ago to talk about his plan for 2015, he spoke about this issue.

“It is our choice,” he said. “We can end discrimination. We can really decide to say, ‘we don’t want any more of those bad laws,’ which are homophobic or which will discriminate people for what they are or for who they love.”

Ending stigma and discrimination is one of the issues identified in the official declaration of the conference.  Read about it in the Washington D.C. Declaration.