Vienna Declaration of AIDS 2010: Let’s “match dollars to SENSE”

After two weeks away from the office (no, not in Vienna, unfortunately) I have been scrambling to catch up on HIV/AIDS news.  Of course, the biggest news of the past month comes out of the 18th International AIDS Conference, AIDS 2010, held July 18 – 23 in Vienna, Austria.  PWN’s Executive Director Marcie Summers was there, and we anxiously await her impressions and those of the other activists who attended.  In the meantime, I feel responsible to summarize the big news.  For those who want to dive in further, check out Kaiser’s webcasts of the whole conference.

The conference theme was “Rights Here, Right Now” – fitting in light of the fact that 2010 is the year the powerful nations of the world decided we would have universal access to care and treatment.  (See Monique’s pre-conference post for more about this.)  Of course, we still don’t have universal access and epidemics are on the rise virtually everywhere harm reduction strategies are lacking (including in Canada, which is significant since 2006 numbers showed a leveling off).  The conference correctly focused on this issue, in particular addressing the need for governments to heed the undeniable scientific evidence and implement harm reduction strategies for people who inject drugs.

The Vienna Declaration, the official declaration of AIDS 2010, endorsed by 15,438 people at the time of writing (but shamefully not by the Government of Canada), states that “the criminalisation of illicit drug users is fuelling the HIV epidemic and has resulted in overwhelmingly negative health and social consequences” and calls for governments to end the war on drugs and commit instead to evidence-based drug policies that “strengthen HIV prevention for people who use drugs”. 

In another unabashedly political statement, AIDS 2010 Chair and now-former-President of the International AIDS Society, Vancouver’s own Dr. Julio Montaner, lambasted Wall Street for its backward spending priorities:

“International governments say we face a crisis of resources, but that is simply not true: The challenge is not finding money, but changing priorities. When there is a Wall Street emergency or an energy crisis, billions upon billions of dollars are quickly mobilized. People’s health deserves a similar financial response and much higher priority” (from the Globe and Mail).

As Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (GNP+) Chair Rachel Ong put it so eloquently in her closing remarks, we must “match dollars to SENSE”.

On the Science front, one conference announcement has HUGE significance for HIV prevention, and for women who are at risk for contracting HIV.  For the first time, an advanced clinical trial has shown that a vaginal gel can safely help prevent HIV.  While we are a ways away from a licensing a new drug, the CAPRISA 004 trial is the boost that the demoralized (but dedicated) community of microbicide activists has been searching for.  Vaginal insertion of 1% tenofovir gel within 12 hours before and after sex was found to be 39% effective at reducing a woman’s risk for HIV and 51% effective in preventing genital herpes.  “Should other studies of tenofovir gel confirm these results,” says the Centre for AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), “widespread use of the gel, at this level of protection, could prevent over half a million new HIV infections in South Africa alone over the next decade”.  For more details and answers to some of your questions about ethics, possible ARV resistance, etc., visit the Global Campaign for Microbicides.

I’m pleased that the international AIDS community has taken up the clear and well-founded call for harm reduction and is unapologetically calling the bluff of world leaders who claim to be lacking funds, but who are actually mismanaging them.  Bravo!

-Miriam

This was posted on Friday, August 6th, 2010 at 9:30 am and is filed under HIV Prevention, News, Special Events . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.

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