AIDS 98 : Bridging the gap

The Vancouver Conference may be remembered for its ground-breaking announcements about combination therapy and for its Benetton-like One World One Hope slogan. Get your cans of blood-red paint ready : Bridging the gap is the chosen theme for AIDS98, the twelfth edition of these scientific conferences organized by the International AIDS Society (IAS). The North-South divide is to be at the heart of debate.

The international AIDS conferences, funded by the pharmaceutical industry and by medical institutions, have nevertheless been historically important moments for worldwide AIDS struggles, a platform to draw attention to, for example, the blatant profiteering of multinational pharmaceuticals, or to the on-going Phase III vaccine trials in the Third World unimaginable in the rich countries. Such interventions remain powerful reminders that no AIDS conference could leave the practice and the claims of cutting-edge modern science unchallenged, and that people and communities living with the virus must have not only a seat at the table but are the only ones who can set the AIDS agenda.

For the first time, the so-called Geneva Principle splits the conference into scientific and official community components. This community committee is headed by the UK Terrence Higgins Trust chair Robin Gorna.

Whether officializing the community component will succeed in diluting activist anger and interventions remains to be seen.

Contact : Ken Morrisson
Geneva AIDS 98 Secretariat
94 rue des Eaux-Vives
CH-1207 Geneva
Switzerland
Phone : +41 22 737 3344
E-mail : morrison@aids98.ch