I haven’t heard yet whether delegates at this week’s International AIDS conference — slogan, “Right Here, Right Now” — ever broke into any rousing choruses in the key of Jesus Jones. Given broad fears that the war on HIV/AIDS is falling apart, though, it seems unlikely.
Still, there was plenty of showmanship to be found. As Mitchel Zoler writes, singer Annie Lennox co-chaired a plenary session, while volunteers frescoed the halls and columns with pastel mosaics and murals made of condoms.
But beyond it all was an overriding sense of frustration with the fact that donor money for HIV/AIDS is rapidly disappearing. Earlier this week, for example, Desmond Tutu penned a New York Times op-ed unfavorably comparing the Obama administration’s track record on the issue with that of President Bush.
ABC Espana – La Conferencia Internacional SIDA 2010, que concluye hoy en Viena, ha debatido sobre numerosos aspectos de la epidemia, entre los que destacan los derechos humanos y el riesgo de que la pérdida de fondos eche por tierra los grandes avances de los últimos años. Estos fueron varios de los temas claves de la reunión.
Derechos humanos: El trabajo sexual en condiciones precarias, la falta de asistencia sanitaria en las prisiones o el estigma que sufren los homosexuales han sido señalados como graves barreras para luchar contra el VIH.
Declaración de Viena: “La penalización de los consumidores de drogas ilícitas está fomentando la epidemia de VIH con consecuencias sociales y de salud, tremendamente negativas”. Ese el mensaje del documento oficial de la conferencia, que pide más ciencia y menos represión en la atención a los drogodependientes.
El Economista – La XVIII Conferencia Internacional sobre SIDA, celebrada del 19 al 23 de julio en Viena, pide que los gobiernos y organismos internacionales reconozcan el fracaso del enfoque de la “guerra contra las drogas”. La investigación de décadas muestra, dicen los especialistas, que la visión prohibicionista y represiva no reduce la demanda y la violencia y sí las incrementa.
La ONU en respuesta a los daños sociales y de salud, afirma la declaración, fomentó un “gran régimen internacional de prohibición de drogas” que ha fracasado. La comunidad científica internacional, reunida en Viena, pidió que la ONU reconozca “las limitaciones y los perjuicios de la prohibición de drogas” y que promueva una “política de drogas para retirar barreras”.
Lila Italia – Intervista della Lila, Lega italiana per la lotta contro l’Aids, a Evan Wood, chair del comitato di redattori della Dichiarazione di Vienna e fondatore dell’International Centre for Science in Drug Policy, Canada.
“La criminalizzazione dei consumatori di droghe alimenta la diffusione di Hiv/Aids”.
La Dichiarazione di Vienna è la dichiarazione ufficiale della XVIII Conferenza mondiale sull’Aids (AIDS 2010) che si è tenuta a Vienna, in Austria, dal 18 al 23 luglio 2010. È stata redatta da un team di esperti internazionali e promossa da alcuni dei principali organismi scientifici a livello mondiale contro l’Hiv e sulle politiche sulla droga: l’International AIDS Society, l’International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP), e il British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.
La Dichiarazione di Vienna è un documento scientifico, che mira a migliorare la salute e la sicurezza pubbliche, invocando l’introduzione nelle politiche in materia di droga di principi fondati su solide basi scientifiche.
Today marks the end of the International AIDS Conference in Vienna, where more than 20,000 delegates representing scientists, global health leaders and advocates convened to discuss the latest developments in the epidemic that now afflicts 33.4 million people worldwide.
The Health Blog was among the crowd and spoke with Julio Montaner, outgoing president of the International AIDS Society, which sponsored the meeting, about some of the themes that emerged.
Canadians might have an international reputation for peacekeeping and being polite, but people passing through Vienna this week, might be developing a different impression.
A group of Canadian HIV/AIDS activists took over and trashed Canada’s exhibit booth at the 18th International AIDS Conference in the Austrian capital.
Diario El Sol – Comenzó en la ciudad austriaca de Viena, la XVIII Conferencia Internacional sobre Sida, que hasta mañana reúne a más de 20 mil delegados -expertos en Sida, profe-sionales de la salud, activistas, personas viviendo con VIH/Sida y líderes sociales- de más de 185 países de todo el mundo. Aquí en donde el río Danubio se escapa para recorrer otros ochos países y convertirse en el segundo más largo de Europa, aquí en donde Freud inauguró el siglo XX con su famoso libro sobre, “La interpreta-ción de los sueños”, aquí en donde Mozart y Strauss deslumbraron a toda Europa con sus genialidades, quedó inaugurada una nueva conferencia sobre Sida, bajo el lema “Derechos aquí y ahora”.
Earth Times – Activists and experts at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna said the human rights of people infected with HIV must be a priority if the spread of the virus that causes AIDS is to be stopped.
Human rights are the main theme of the 18th biennial event, which ends Friday. Another focus is the rapid spread of HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Participants in the conference said that rights are an essential part of any attempt to slow and reverse an epidemic that has so far claimed some 25 million lives.
“We have to implement HIV prevention as a human right,” said Anna Shakarishvili, Ukraine coordinator for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
Rights are important, advocates said, because discrimination against people with HIV, intolerance towards homosexuals and criminalization of intravenous drug use drive underground those in need of treatment or at risk of becoming infected.
“The challenge is to translate a rhetorical theme into real action on the ground,” Joe Amon, director of health and human rights at US- based Human Rights Watch, told the German News Agency dpa.
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Some of the world’s top AIDS experts issued a radical manifesto this week at the 18th International AIDS Conference: They declared the war on drugs a 50-year-old failure and called for it to be abandoned.
No one heard.
Officially, the theme of the AIDS meeting, the world’s largest public health gathering, is the need to attack the rapidly growing epidemic among addicts in Eastern Europe, Russia and Asia. It was held in Vienna because this city is the doorway to the East and, in this German-speaking country, all the conference signs are in English and Russian.
(In a lovely ironic touch, the conference hall is only a few steps from the Ferris wheel in the Orson Welles film noir classic set in postwar Vienna, “The Third Man.” On it, a cynical dealer of counterfeit drugs tells his pursuer to look down at the people below and says: “Victims? Don’t be melodramatic…. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?”)
Europe now has the fastest growing HIV epidemic in the world, due in large part to intravenous drug use, the World Health Organization told the International AIDS Conference in Vienna Wednesday.
The epidemic is disproportionately affecting Eastern Europe, which accounts for about 80 percent of the more than 100,000 new HIV infections reported in Europe in 2008.
“The situation in Eastern Europe is very volatile,” said Martin Donoghoe, program manager for WHO’s Europe HIV/AIDS office. “The dominant HIV transmission route in the East is injection drug use.”
In some countries in the region an estimated 50 percent of all HIV infected individuals are injecting drug users, or IDUs, a population that is particularly hard to reach and serve with prevention and treatment efforts. HIV treatment levels in Eastern Europe are also some of the lowest in the world, Donoghoe said, because drug users are “highly marginalized.”