Social Justice

(good thing we're all working on that!)

The venerable medical journal the Lancet dedicated its pre-IAC issue to HIV-prevention, what editor Richard Horton called “the neglected issue in the AIDS response.” On Wednesday, contributing authors called for a reinvigorated movement for prevention that demands a comprehensive, multifaceted approach, including structural change. Mirroring the Caucus for Evidence Based Prevention critiques of narrow definitions of evidence, the distinguished panel also called for investment in flexibile, realistic monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.

Jeffery O’Malley, director of the HIV and AIDS group at the UN Development Program, opened with the history of HIV-prevention, urging us to remember when prevention and epidemiology were all the AIDS community had enough information talk about. In the early 80s, he recalled, “gay men and drag queens invented safe sex, and they still haven’t been given the Nobel Prize.”

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Peter Piot, the tireless outgoing founding director of UNAIDS, put it bluntly in an address to the pre-conference MSM Global Forum on August 1:

"Homophobia - in all its forms - is one of the top five barriers to ending this epidemic, worldwide. The fight against the epidemic is entering a new phase, and if governments and NGOs and international organizations like my own do not take up the fight for gay rights, and the rights of all people with diverse sexuality, we will not end AIDS."

He went on to say that in nearly every country (including the USA) the resources devoted to prevention, research and care among MSM are vastly smaller than their numerical weight in the epidemic would compel as a matter of fairness and effectiveness.

Earlier presentations at the MSM forum had reviewed in detail what we know, and what we don't know, about the epidemic among MSM in various countries and about how the disproporionate impact on MSM everywhere is a general drive of the epidemic.

In Latin America, MSM are the major affected population throughout, and in much of the Caribbean as well. In Asia, MSM are a significant part iof the epidemic in India, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and China.

In most Asian countries, MSM are the third part of the "triumvirate of concentrated epidemics," including commercial sex workers and injection drug users (and, of course, some MSM belong to all three groups).  read more »

We've got the August 2008 special issue of AIDS which will be released at the IAC. The theme of this special issue is LEAP: Leadership, Equity, Accountability, and Partnerships to provide concrete recommendations for implementing the Ford Foundation's Global HIV/AIDS Initiative. We applaud the journal, the Ford Foundation and the authors for their emphasis on social justice.

Click the article title to jump to the abstract and PDF.

» Creating a world that survives, and thrives, with AIDS
» Moving beyond the alphabet soup of HIV prevention
» The next 5 years of global HIV/AIDS policy: critical gaps and strategies for effective responses
» Leadership development and HIV/AIDS
» Wealth, health, HIV and the economics of hope
» Gender and AIDS: time to act
» Stigma in the HIV/AIDS epidemic: a review of the literature and recommendations for the way forward
» The role of harm reduction in controlling HIV among injecting drug users
» Refocusing and prioritizing HIV programmes in conflict and post-conflict settings: funding recommendations
» Accountability in the global response to HIV: measuring progress, driving change
» Health and human rights in today's fight against HIV/AIDS

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