Martin Flynn reports from the 16th International Aids Conference in Toronto
conference SPECIAL

Realism and hope from Toronto

Guarded hope and quiet optimism permeated the massive halls and endless escalators of Toronto’s Convention Centre at the end of the 16th World Aids Conference.
Many of the 25,000 delegates, volunteers and journalists headed home with renewed enthusiasm to battle the HIV pandemic. But others remained sceptical about the proliferation of the Aids industry with hundreds of organisations chasing funding.
While the world media focused on celebrities at the conference like Bill and Melinda Gates, Bill Clinton, and Richard Gere, many accused the event of being long on spectacle and short on science.
Ten years year ago at the Vancouver World Aids Conference there was hope that the new triple therapy of antiretroviral drugs would stem the rapid rise of the
disease. But at Toronto everyone realised that with 40 million people living with the disease, and three million dying from it each year, a cure is still a long way off. Many activists felt marginalised and carried banners protesting ‘Two pills are better than Two Bills’, ‘Life before profit’ and ‘Stop the Hollywood Circus, people are dying’. Some felt the conference was drowning under the weight of celebrity endorsement in the absence of real political leadership. For the first time, however, there was a strong emphasis at Toronto on empowering women and listening to young people, yet there were few black women or youngsters on the speaker platforms.
The spotlight also fell on human rights violations and gender inequalities that have prevented millions access to any treatments and prevention services.
Although there were few new HIV treatments presented at the conference [see Treatment News,
pg 42, for latest reports] there was excitement about expanding HIV prevention technologies.
But abstinence-based prevention campaigns were dismissed as being against human nature and not any kind of answer while women lack power to defend their own lives.
Many felt new drugs slowly coming online will be no more than expensive extras to the existing drugs we already have. And they will be far too expensive for 90 per cent of people living with the
disease in developing countries.
The failure of Conservative Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, to attend reflected badly on him but not on his country which has led the way in HIV research and care for 25 years.
After last year’s G8 Gleneagles promises to provide universal access to HIV drugs by 2010, many thought that this was the time to keep an eye on our political leaders.
Heroes included activists and doctors who have battled since the early days. There was the eloquence of Stephen Lewis, the Canadian-born UN general secretary’s special envoy on Aids to Africa, who was the unequalled orator and conscience of the conference. And there were the usual easy targets like South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who insists that eating garlic and lemon are just as good at fighting the virus as antiretroviral drugs.
The conference theme was ‘Time to Deliver’ and there was some real hope that we now have the wherewithal to deliver the drugs in time to save millions of lives.
But was Toronto any more than just another expensive talking shop? Only time and millions more lost lives will tell…

Clinton points finger at corrupt leaders
Ex-US President Bill Clinton directed his ire at corrupt political leaders who have hived off Aids monies for themselves and their political lackeys. “If somebody is stealing the money, they should be fired from the government and prosecuted. Even if there is a culture of corruption in some countries they should go and steal somewhere else.” Stephen Lewis received praise for slamming the abstinence-heavy policies of President Bush as “incipient neo-colonialism.” He also described the South African government as “obtuse, dilatory and negligent” over HIV treatment. “What sort of world are we living in where the life of an African or Asian child is worth so much less than the life of a Canadian child?”

SA health minister faces calls to quit
Aids activists called for the resignation of South African Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimand (left), at the Toronto conference.
Mark Heywood, head of the Aids Law Project in South Africa, said she had told people to take garlic and lemons but minimised the role of antiretroviral drugs.Only 100,000 of South Africa’s six million HIV positive people get life-saving drugs following years of denial about the devastating impact of the disease.

UKC chair in spotlight at Toronto
UKC chair Bernard Forbes (right) had the unenviable task of summing up the best of the policy presentations made to the main Toronto Conference this summer.
Forbes spoke eloquently to an audience of thousands before the conference closing ceremony about the lack of human rights for millions of people living and dying with HIV.
“The world has the science and the means to fight Aids,” Forbes said. “However, lack of political will and national policies continues to cripple the Aids response.”

Leading activist slams ‘Aids bureaucracy’
Gregg Gonsalves of the South African Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) hit out at “the often misdirected energies and efforts, and paralaysing effects of the international Aids bureaucracy.”
Gonsalves (left) slammed the vast aid industry which he said had worsened famine and disease across Africa, as “unaccountable and self-justifying;” promoting development assistance instead of social change. But he praised ‘the real heroes,’ including UKC founders John Campbell and John Mordant.
“We are at an anti-political moment right now where the powers-that-be have taken our rhetoric and told us that everything is fine – you can demobilise and leave the epidemic to us.”

Words

“This conference has become the HIV prevention conference. There were four million new infections in 2005”
Dr Helene Gayle, Toronto co-chair

“Access to HIV drugs is a right not a privilege”
Dr Mark Wainberg, Aids2006 co-chair

“A woman should never have to seek her partner’s permission to save her own life”
Bill Gates on the problem women have getting men to wear condoms

“We have to put the power for prevention into the hands of women. Fewer than one in five at risk has access
to prevention”
Melinda Gates

“Those who advocated abstinence prevention programmes do not understand how this
dis-empowers women”
Stephen Lewis, UN special envoy on HIV/Aids in Africa

“Every minute of everyday a child dies from HIV. Every 15 seconds a young person is infected”
Michelle Jean, Governor General of Canada

“The enemy has been slowed but not halted. The mood in Toronto is one of hope but now is the time we
have to deliver”
Professor Richard Feacham, executive director of the Global Fund

“The DEF of ABC is… Don’t Eliminate the Future”
Mary Robinson, former President of Eire

“HIV/Aids is the true terrorist on the planet today. Because of my Buddhist beliefs I think we’re all redeemable”
Richard Gere

“The drugs business around the world brings in $322 billion a year and represents eight per cent of global trade”
Dr Alex Wodal

“The more people who know their status and are treated the better”
Dr Gita Ranjee

“Two pills are better than two Bills. This is the Hollywood conference, not the activist conference”
Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) demo placard

“It’s not Bill Gates or Bill Clinton who have made a difference in this epidemic despite their welcome to this meeting as some sort of royalty”
TAC’s Gregg Gonzales

“US government – put the sex and drugs back into HIV prevention”
Banner in Conference Global Village

“We will not accept any kind of Schindler’s list as thousands of women and children die everday”
Dr Pedro Cahn, new IAS president and president of the Argentinian Aids Foundation