Activism
AIDS Activism in the Media
Activism has long been a factor in advancing treatment and finding a cure for AIDS. Organizations like ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) and TAG (Treatment Action Group) advocated for those infected from the beginning of the epidemic. Because of these groups, patients have benefited from research funding that has led to cutting-edge treatments and transformed […]
UNAIDS Director Calls For Ending Stigma and Discrimination
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 […]
U.S. Congress and the Global AIDS Epidemic
Bipartisan political support is central to the U.S. government’s domestic and international response to HIV/AIDS, and a special session devoted to this response was held at AIDS 2012 on Wednesday. Vivek Jain, an assistant professor of medicine in the UCSF Division of HIV/AIDS at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH), offered the following report on the session: Former […]
Doing Some Good
The best reason for coming to a conference like this, in my opinion — indeed, the best reason to even have an International AIDS Conference — is to bring people together from around the world to meet and to talk. I’m not talking about the formal presentations, valuable as they might be, but the spontaneous interactions that take place one-on-one throughout the week.
Turning the Tide for Children and Youth
“Turning the Tide for Children and Youth” was a diverse series of presentations about both scientific and programmatic strategies to curb transmission, particularly among women and children.
Barton Haynes began the session with a review of current thinking in vaccine development. Building on recent insights into the moderate (31%) efficacy of the RV144 vaccine trial, he highlighted the protective efficacy of IgG against V1/V2 and the need for future vaccines to elicit broadly neutralizing antibodies
Dr. Geeta Rao Gupta: Turning the Tide for Women and Girls
Dr. Geeta Rao Gupta, deputy executive director of UNICEF, spoke this morning about the roadmap to turning the tide for women and girls. Women and adolescent girls bear the burden of the HIV epidemic globally.
Women and girls are particularly vulnerable to HIV because of limited access to education, limited control of productive resources including income, land and employment, and limited social capital.
Making Women Count: A Comprehensive Agenda
The waves of optimism which have swept through this conference were, for the first time in many years, stirring the field of women and children in the Wednesday morning plenaries.
Following a riveting and comprehensive discussion by Dr. Chewe Luo from Zambia on the current state of maternal-to-child-transmission and treatment of children worldwide, Linda Scruggs, an HIV-positive woman working in the field for [more than] 20 years, mounted the platform to spontaneous applause.
UNAIDS Director Calls for Zero Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission
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. He appeared on the main stage with Florence Uche […]
AIDS 2012 Draws Thousands to Nation’s Capitol
Bill and Hillary Clinton, Sharon Stone, Kathleen Sebelius, Bill Gates and Elton John are a few of the headliners to speak this week at AIDS 2012, the XIX International AIDS Conference, which runs through July 27 in Washington, D.C.
Deciding Moment: Ending the AIDS Epidemic in America Together
Phill Wilson, president of the Black AIDS Institute, delivered an inspirational and informative plenary session on Monday. At the start of his talk, he stressed the diversity of the U.S. HIV epidemic: “We have one of the most complicated epidemics in the world.”
