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 The International AIDS Conference has shown what has been done, and what we still need to do, writes Brett Hayhoe.
Held in history-rich Mexico City, from the 3rd to the 8th of August, the 17th International AIDS Conference was the second largest ever held and the only in Latin America. Twenty-five thousand AIDS activists, health care workers, doctors, sector leaders and workers, positive people, and media from around the globe gathered at the Centro Banamex complex to engage, discuss, learn, share, and listen to a myriad of speakers from (former USA President) Bill Clinton to Justice Edwin Cameron. The conference showed us that it is only through individual and collective action that we will reach the goals of ensuring universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010, and eliminate HIV stigma and discrimination. Universal Action Now is also an important reminder that the fight for equal human rights is far from being over.
One hundred sixty-six delegates from Australia (I attended as both a representative of PLWHA Victoria and as a member of the media contingent) participated to hopefully gain the knowledge required to continue the battle against this sometimes forgotten epidemic. This conference however had a very clear focus on Africa and Europe, giving very little mention to our country at all. I guess you can take that as a compliment and assume the reason being that Australia does have access to treatments, a very high level of care and support for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), reasonably good prevention methods in place, and although criminalisation does exist it is not as bad as it could be.
The main focus of this conference was youth, women, MSM, sex workers, injecting durg-users and the involvement of PWLHA prevention, education, care and support at every level of the response. The conference concentrated on the severe lack of access to treatments in many countries around the world, the stigma and discrimination that still occurs due to a person’s sexuality or HIV status, poor education and the resultant difficulties this can cause with prevention interventions, and how ludicrous criminalisation laws have entered even African countries, resulting in injustice after mind-numbing injustice to occur. It is a timely reminder to Australia’s law makers, that the addition of specific HIV clauses into already efficient and applicable laws is both superfluous and discriminatory.
Criminalisation does NOTHING to reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS in any community. It only exacerbates the situation by reducing people’s willingness to test and therefore be a higher risk of spreading the virus, arrest the tendency for disclosure for fear of retribution, and send HIV back into the closet where it was many years ago. In my opinion, the moment HIV/AIDS becomes invisible; infection and death rates will sky-rocket to levels not seen since the early eighties. This is something surely no government wants to be the blame for. Criminalisation stops people talking about HIV/AIDS, fuels stigma and discrimination, and threatens the basic fabric of human rights.
The 17th IAC was also the first time a plenary speech was dedicated to men who have sex with men (MSM), and one to female, male and transgender sex workers.
Presenting a very powerful speech, Dr. Jorge Saavedra, Head of Mexico’s National HIV/AIDS Programme delivered the Jonathon Mann Memorial Lecture, providing a multi-dimensional overview of the HIV epidemic in men who have sex with men, specifically highlighting hidden epidemics among MSM in low and middle-income countries, and factors that increase HIV risk and vulnerability across cultures. He also called for the decriminalisation of sexual behaviour between consenting adults, and greater commitment from donors to both fund MSM programmes, and to include measures of responsiveness to MSM needs in program evaluation.
In conclusion, I can honestly say that this has been the best HIV/AIDS community-sector experience of my life and one which I will treasure forever. I do hope I have the opportunity to attend the 18th IAC in Vienna in 2010.
Brett Hayhoe is the president of PLWHA Victoria.
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