Here are the final numbers for AIDS 2010:

• 19,300 participants, including:
      - 16,012 delegates
      - 845 participants from Austria*
      - 1,218 participants from Eastern Europe and Central Asia
      - 848 scholarship recipients
      - 1,276 media delegates
• 770  volunteers
• 197 countries represented
• 10,831 abstracts submitted, 6,238 abstracts accepted
• 248 sessions (59 non-abstract driven sessions, 79 workshops, 110 abstract-driven sessions)
• 19  plenary speeches
• 18 special sessions
• 279 Global Village activities, including 55 sessions, 95 NGO booths and 27 Networking Zones
• 151 exhibits
• 127 satellite meetings
• 10 scientific prizes and awards
• 12,324 Facebook fans, 8,420 #AIDS2010 tweets and 48 blog posts
• 71,043 visits to www.aids2010.org (since Sunday, 18 July)
• 12,725+ Vienna Declaration signatures (as of Friday, 22 July)

* Does not include general public participation in the Global Village, which is difficult to estimate.

©IAS/Marcus Rose/Workers' Photos

The AIDS 2010 rapporteurs held their Summary Session immediately before the Closing Session on Friday. All week long, rapporteurs have been “scurrying around” collecting and synthesizing presentations, according to session Chair Alan Whiteside, Director of the Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division at the University of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa. The rapporteurs - experienced scientists, clinicians, researchers and advocates from around the world - summarised many of the presentations made during the week, focusing on critical issues addressed, important results presented and key recommendations put forward. The rapporteur reports will be available here and in the Programme-at-a-Glance. More...

©IAS/Steve Forrest/Workers' Photos

The First Lady of Georgia, Sandra Roelofs, today endorsed the Vienna Declaration witha crowd of media, Dr. Evan Wood, Founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy and one of the authors of the declaration, and Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, looking on. 

The declaration – the official declaration of AIDS 2010 – is a scientific statement seeking to address the HIV epidemic among persons who inject drugs, among other harms, through the incorporation of scientific evidence into drug policies.  The Minister of Labour, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia, Irakli Giorgobiani, and the Deputy Chairman of Parliament of Georgia, George Tsereteli, also signed the declaration.

[Originally posted 14 June 2010]

The people of Vienna and all of Austria are eager to welcome the world to Vienna next month for AIDS 2010. We are proud to build on our city’s rich history as a bridge between East and West and to host the International AIDS Conference at such an important crossroads in our collective efforts to reverse the course of the epidemic. It is our hope that AIDS 2010 will deepen the understanding of how the promotion and protection of human rights is a prerequisite to an effective and evidence-based response to HIV.  

Brigitte Schmied, Local Co-Chair, AIDS 2010, with Sonja Wehsely, Health Counselor, City of Vienna, Agnes Husslein-Arco, Director, Belvedere, and Norbert Kettner, Director, Vienna Tourism at the announcement of the Vienna Cultural Programme.

Local preparations for the conference began two years ago and we have benefitted from a number of important partnerships. The City of Vienna and the Federal Ministry of Health provided key financial support, and Austrian NGOs, including the Austrian AIDS Society (ÖAG) and organizing partners Aids Hilfe Wien and Community Forum Austria, are actively engaged and have helped lay the foundation for success.  ÖAG and AIDS Life also supported scholarships for participants from Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA), and we are expecting a large local turnout at the Global Village and a warm welcome for the human rights march on 20 July. More...

By Amy Cartwright, Writer/Web Coordinator, AIDS Foundation East-West (AFEW)

Since our last update here, the Vienna Express buses have traveled thousands of miles of tarmac and taken in the Republic of Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Moldova, Germany, Holland, Kazakhstan and Macedonia! And, Russian tennis star and PSI Ambassador Anna Kournikova has come on board. She is urging others to join us and send a message in support of universal access.

The Vienna Express has been running for over a month now. AIDS Foundation East-West (AFEW) launched this initiative in mid-June with the aim of linking together public events across Europe and Central Asia that promote solidarity with people living with HIV and universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support.

Once we reach Vienna in a few days, we will bring with us thousands of messages from the people of the region that explain how the HIV response is going in their communities and what still needs to be done. We invite all conference participants to stop by our East-West Wish Tree, where you can see the wishes sent from street children in Kyrgyzstan, German activists, teenagers in Chisinau, shoppers in Old Riga, border guards in Tajikistan…to name but a few who we have met along the way! More...

Resources for universal access and HIV persistance are among the timely issues featured in a special pre-conference HIV/AIDS edition (8 July) of the journal Science.

“Universal Access in the Fight Against HIV/AIDS” documents the scientific evidence and moral arguments in support of increased investments to scale up HIV prevention, treatment and care towards the goal of universal access, helping to lay the groundwork for what will be a central topic in Vienna.

The article’s authors are Françoise Girard, Nathan Ford, Dr. Julio Montaner, Dr. Pedro Cahn and Dr. Elly Katabira. Girard is Co-Chair and Ford a member of the AIDS 2010 Leadership and Accountability Programme Committee and Dr. Montaner is AIDS 2010 Chair and President of the International AIDS Society (IAS). Dr. Cahn was AIDS 2008 Chair and is IAS Immediate Past-President and Dr. Katabira is IAS President-Elect and will serve as AIDS 2012 Chair.

In their conclusion, the authors note, “A retrenchment on AIDS today would seriously jeopardize the substantial progress made to date, at the cost of untold human sacrifice and billions of dollars in economic resources. Furthermore, the increasingly recognized benefit of ART in reducing HIV transmission dramatically enhances the value of the longstanding universal access pledge. As the deadline for universal access looms, greater investment in HIV is a necessary, evidence- based, economic, and moral choice.”

“HIV Persistence and the Prospect of Long-Term Drug-Free Remissions in HIV-Infected Individuals” was produced in conjunction with the IAS Pre-Conference Workshop Towards a Cure: HIV Reservoirs and Strategies to Control Them, chaired by IAS Governing Council Member and Nobel Laureate Françoise Barré-Sinoussi of the Institut Pasteur. More...

By Amy Cartwright, Writer/Web Coordinator, AIDS Foundation East-West (AFEW)

On 20 June, AIDS Foundation East-West (AFEW) kicked off its summer campaign Vienna Express 2010: Towards Universal Access in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. From here, the campaign has begun its journey through 13 countries in Europe and Central Asia. We are posting frequent updates about all of our activities and urge you to follow along and take part.

Teenagers read a "living book" at a Vienna Express event in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

As it trundles across Eurasia, the campaign is taking in a wide variety of public events (concerts, street campaigns, visits to HIV prevention and treatment projects, roundtables, book launches, wrestling matches – our inventiveness knows no bounds!). The goal is to generate media and political attention to the HIV epidemic in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) in the run-up to AIDS 2010.

At the same time, we and our partners are collecting messages for conference delegates from the people we meet at our events. These messages include people’s wishes about the response to HIV and drug use, opinions on the importance of harm reduction and the need to make HIV prevention, treatment, care and support much more widely available. More...

By Vladimir Zhovtyak, President, ECUO, an AIDS 2010 Organizing Partner.

The East Europe and Central Asia Union of PLWH (ECUO) brings together PLHIV communities and organizations from 14 countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) through our joint Russian language and one common goal. ECUO’s goal through 2025 is to ensure access to comprehensive treatment, care and support for adults and children living with HIV in EECA countries through effective partnership and actions of the PLHIV community. ECUO is the only organization in the world representing PLHIV from EECA.

The people of Vienna and all of Austria are eager to welcome the world to Vienna next month for AIDS 2010. We are proud to build on our city’s rich history as a bridge between East and West and to host the International AIDS Conference at such an important crossroads in our collective efforts to reverse the course of the epidemic. It is our hope that AIDS 2010 will deepen the understanding of how the promotion and protection of human rights is a prerequisite to an effective and evidence-based response to HIV.  

Brigitte Schmied, Local Co-Chair, AIDS 2010, with Sonja Wehsely, Health Counselor, City of Vienna, Agnes Husslein-Arco, Director, Belvedere, and Norbert Kettner, Director, Vienna Tourism at the announcement of the Vienna Cultural Programme.