international AIDS conference

Click for Video Richard Wolitski, Ph.D., acting director for the CDC's HIV/AIDS Prevention Division, muses about next steps following the 2008 International AIDS Conference in Mexico City.

The Nigerians sitting behind me on the early morning bus ride to Centro Banamex passionately debated human rights for commercial sex workers and men who have sex with men. 

Others on the bus shuffled papers and thumbed the program book in preparation for their long day ahead.

Today is my last day in Mexico City and I'm tired and filled with emotions.   read more »

Click for Video Rev. Christo Greyling of World Vision International talking about HIV travel and immigration restrictions around the world.

Click for Video Catherine Hanssens of the Center for HIV Law and Policy discusses HIV testing principles. Learn more about this topic at www.hivtestingprinciples.org.

Click for Video Chicago delegate Maurice Chapman shares his impressions of the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City.

Click for Video Views on the International AIDS Conference from a young author and activist

Though times are starting to change, machismo still reins in Mexico as firmly as the tortilla staple diet and devotion to la Virgen de Guadalupe.

Threaded into the national identity of modern Mexico is a strong tradition of sexism, homophobia, and adherence to strict gender roles.

This is the country after all that embraces its bravado breakfast of "huevos rancheros" and its male-dominated cowboy traditions.

Whether and how this predominantly Catholic country of 109 million people moves past such institutional and cultural biases promises important lessons for the rest of Latin America and, indeed, the world.

Slowly, progress is being made. Speaking at the International AIDS Conference's opening plenary, President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa mentioned the word homofobia for the first time. The national government sponsored a groundbreaking campaign to mitigate homophobia in targeted neighborhoods of Mexico City. And a longstanding legal prohibition against a woman's right to choose was recently, and narrowly, repealed in Mexico City, though anti-choice laws prevail in most regions of the country.
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I just attended the press conference preceding the opening session of the IAC, which featured many of tonight's speakers who will give (hopefully) rousing speeches about the state of AIDS, the movement, our successes and where we need to be going. The speakers at the conference gave the 2-minute version of their speech for tonight, and then took questions from the reporters in the audience.

Just when I was about to doze off or die of boredom, Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS was giving his final thoughts at the end of the Q&A, and he began to talk about what should be done globally. He said that "It is important for timely information to be released to the public. It's like the CDC deciding to release this incidence data so late. I don't understand why it took so long. They could have released it in an MMWR."

CHAMP has been following the incidence story since last year when CHAMP executed the Prevention Justice Mobilization around the National HIV Prevention Conference. And I remember CHAMP and PJM allies catching a lot of flack for suggesting in the press that the CDC could have released the numbers sooner, and with their own internal process. It's good to know we weren't the only ones who thought this seemed to take much longer than was necessary.

In fact, when The Washington Blade broke the story on November 14th, 2007,they said in the lede that the CDC was "mulling over" when to release the data. They only talk about a peer-review process in their response further down in the article.

"The U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention is mulling over when to release alarming new statistics showing that as many as 50 percent more people are being infected with HIV each year in the United States than originally reported by the government.

According to AIDS advocacy groups familiar with the CDC, middle level officials at the disease prevention agency have quietly confided in colleagues in professional and scientific circles that the number of new HIV infections now appears to be as high as 58,000 to 63,000 cases in the most recent 12-month period."

If you want to watch the Opening Session live, Kaiser Family Foundation is webcasting it at 8pm EST.  read more »