activism still makes a difference
Trinidad. Many delegates left the conference venue and joined doctors and nurses outside a Port of Spain clinic to protest about poor
conditions.
Dr Avery Browne said the Queen's Park Clinic saw 70 to 90 patients a day
but renovations promised six years ago still hadn't been done. It had
"poor physical facilities, disastrous management" and was 'a
disaster zone,' he said.
Similar rows also surfaced. A Cuban government spokesman, who described
in glowing terms the way in which HIV positive people in his country received
treatment access and support, was interrupted by an Israeli activist who
said that positive people in Cuba were actually locked up in detention
camps and less than 100 actually received anti-retrovirals. The Israeli
was himself then challenged about his own government's treatment of the
Palestinians.
A delegation from Africa protested that the meeting did not give enough
focus to the devastation wrought by Aids in that continent.
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There was criticism about poor organisation, with some people up in arms that promised scholarships to attend were cancelled just a few days before the conference started. Some attendees arrived only to find there was nowhere for them to stay and no funding for them to register, and some people trying to get to the conference were denied transit visas by the USA and were therefore unable to attend.
