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...

Presenters at the Opening Session spoke boldly about the state of the epidemic and the steps necessary to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support.

A full webcast and audio of Sunday’s Opening Session is available here. Photos here. Quotes from some of the speakers follow with more to be added.

Julio Montaner, (Canada) AIDS 2010 Chair, President of the International AIDS Society and Director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in Vancouver, Canada

“I cannot hide my profound disappointment and deep frustration with the recently concluded G8/G20 meetings in Canada. By failing to take responsibility for the universal access pledge, and more importantly for failing to articulate next steps to meet not just the 6th Millenium Development Goal but all of them by 2015, the G8 has, quite simply, failed us.”

(c)IAS/Marcus Rose/Workers' Photos

“When it comes to universal access, the G8 chose to ignore their commitments before the crisis, and they are poised to continue to do so today. Let’s be clear: It is only a matter of priorities and, friends, their priorities have to change. Therefore, our number one objective here today must be to ensure that AIDS remains at the top of their agenda.”

Full remarks.

Brigitte Schmied, AIDS 2010 Local Co-Chair and President of the Austrian AIDS Society, Austria

“Rights Here, Right Now also emphasizes the right to health care, including access to all scientifically sound HIV prevention interventions, such as opioid substitution therapy and needle and syringe programmes.  To this end, I urge each of you to add your voice to the growing call for the reform of illicit drug policies by signing the Vienna Declaration.  Treatment, not prosecution, is demanded!”

“In our shrinking world, the goal of universal access and global health can no longer be viewed as a story about ‘others.’ These are our stories. Universal access is our responsibility. And, holding ourselves and our political leaders accountable is our continued challenge. Let us meet this challenge with tenacity and fervour in the days and months ahead.”

Full remarks.

Michel Sidibe, Executive Director of UNAIDS and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mali

“The shared responsibility we have to the world belongs to all governments, civil society, and every agency – bilateral, multilateral and normative.  The time has come for a Robin Hood tax, so the financial sector contributes its fair share as well. Our vision must be uncompromising.  We want nothing less than: Zero new infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS-related deaths.”

“Gender equality must become part of our DNA.” 

Heinz Fischer, Federal President of the Republic of Austria

“Even if I fully support that free, gender-balanced access to treatment is a fundamental human right, we will not be able to contain the epidemic any time if we do not implement an integrated approach of prevention, care and treatment.”

“I strongly urge governments, where they have not yet done so, to institute and ensure the enforcement of laws and to create a legal framework enabling the implementation of all measures needed in the successful fight against HIV/AIDS.”

[Originally posted 14 June 2010]

AIDS 2010 will take place at a pivotal time in the HIV epidemic. This is the target year that the leaders of the Group of 8 (G8) -- and eventually all UN member states -- set for achieving universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support. Since the universal access target was set five years ago, we have made significant strides:

• By December 2008, over four million people were receiving antiretroviral therapy in low- and middle-income countries, one million more than in the previous year.
• Almost half of all pregnant women living with HIV in low- and middle-income countries received antiretrovirals to prevent mother-to-child transmission.
• More people were counseled and tested for HIV in 2008 than in previous years.
• More children living with HIV are benefiting from treatment and care programmes.

Kicosehp NGO, Kibera Community Self Help programme, Kenya. Credit: UNAIDS/G. Pirozzi.

Though we still have far to go, this progress is tangible evidence of the feasibility of scaling up HIV programmes, even in the poorest areas. More...

[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...

Remarkably, there is also a critical mass of scientific evidence regarding the unintended negative consequences of policies based exclusively on drug law enforcement.  We have to recognize that the war on drugs has not only failed to reduce illicit drug supply and use, but it has also resulted in a range of human rights violations, drug market violence and HIV and HCV epidemics among users. 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...

By Alois Stöger, Minister of Health, Austria

In Austria, the first HIV/AIDS cases were diagnosed in 1983.

In 1983 only very restricted information was available on:

• the real nature of HIV/AIDS
• perspectives considering the development of vaccines
• perspectives considering the development of treatment
• no hope for treatment HIV/AIDS was an untreatable, incurable, deadly disease.

The only possible response was:

• information and consolidation of the available knowledge concerning:
  *possible modes of transmission
  *public health action with a potential to decrease risk
  *activities to decrease individual risk with a focus on behavioural change
  *measures to avoid discrimination of people living with HIV/AIDS
• public health measures to enable vulnerable groups to protect themselves
• public health measures to cut nosocomial infections, transmission by blood transfusions and blood products. More...

Learning opportunities in Vienna will not be limited to the Messe Wien. Engagement Tours – available to delegates at no cost – are a great way to see and learn from local groups responding to HIV and illicit drug use, and to share your knowledge and experiences with others.

Tours will visit a range of institutions, including the harm reduction programme at the police detention centre, a drug treatment programme offering opioid substitution therapy, an HIV social service NGO, a hospital-based HIV clinic and more.

Tours are offered Monday through Thursday from 11:00 to 14:00 and 15:00 to 18:00 and each tour visits two or three programmes. Volunteers will guide the delegates to participating institutions via public transport. Click here to read more and sign up for a tour. 

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 Prof. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi

As a scientist, I strongly support drug policies that are based on scientific evidence of what actually works and that respect universal human rights. That is why I joined my colleagues around the world to sign the Vienna Declaration.

As the Vienna Declaration notes, current illicit drug policy is a serious obstacle in the global fight against HIV/AIDS. In addition to failing to achieve its stated objectives, the conventional “war on drugs approach” stigmatizes and criminalizes people who use drugs, increasing their vulnerability to HIV. In cases where people who use drugs are already infected with HIV, these policies impede their ability to access life-saving treatments and interventions to prevent transmission.

Join me and my colleagues in signing the Vienna Declaration and reminding governments that every time they fail to act on evidence-based drug policy options, they cost us precious time in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Prof. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi is the Director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Unit at the Institut Pasteur and shares the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for her discovery of HIV.