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This network of community workers is called Red 2002 and
has been constructed over the past three years. Different initiatives
have grown out of this collaboration: a treatment activist forum, working
groups on prevention, harm reduction, women, infancy and adolescents.
The repercussions of this group's declarations and campaigning in the
local media during the conference had not been seen before in Spain. Its
voice was heard widely and grabbed headlines. The local HIV community
became more visible than
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ever before.
This must not stop here. This country, after all that happened at the
conference, must stop wallowing in complacency. There is a lot to be done,
both at home and outside.
You see, here, in Barcelona, we try to be very European. There is a great
desire to recover from 40 years of dictatorship as quickly and efficiently
as possible.
But the recent advances and improvements, the evident 'renaissance' of
the city in ways ranging from huge urban improvements to designer shops,
sometimes stop us seeing the important things that have fallen by the
wayside. The presence and the suffering of many people with HIV is one
of these.
Spain is a country that presumes to offer high standards of care and treatment.
It maintains that it has a free and universal health system. But it's
also a country that does not dispense condoms for free or even at reduced
cost, that does not have an active political agenda for the reduction
of stigma; and that does not offer much at all in the way of economic
assistance for people living with HIV.
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