For a full summary of sessions, including Powerpoint Slides, click here.

Treatment as Prevention: Is It Time for Action?

This session focused on the timely and important issue of antiretroviral therapy (ART) as a prevention intervention. The opportunities and challenges implicit in this approach will be presented by various speakers, each bringing a different perspective on the issue. Among the presenters in this session was BC-CfE Director Dr. Julio Montaner. 

Sex Workers and Allies Call for Change in U.S. Policy on Sex Work and HIV (Press Release)

WASHINGTON, DC: On the first day of the International AIDS Conference in Washington, DC sex workers and their allies issued a call for change in U.S. policy on sex work and HIV. The panel included Dr. Aziza Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Law, Northeastern University; Dr. Kate Shannon, Director of Gender and Sexual Health Initiative of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia; Darby Hickey, Policy Analyst for Best Practices Policy Project in Washington, DC; and Kyomya MacKlean, Executive Director of WONETHA, an organization that fights for sex workers’ human rights in Uganda. 

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http://sexworkandhiv.org/

Drug Policy Experts Attending AIDS 2012 Challenge Obama and Romney to End the War on Drugs

The Vienna Declaration, a scientific statement seeking to improve community health and safety by incorporating scientific evidence into illicit drug policies, will close July 24 with more than 23,400 signatures and a demand that U.S. presidential candidates and other world leaders end the destructive and costly war on drugs.

To reinforce this demand, a controversial advertisement will run in the influential Politico newspaper tomorrow. It will call on President Obama and Governor Romney to listen to the scientific evidence and public health community and acknowledge the link between AIDS and the war on drugs, and end the war on drugs.

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Plenary: Ending the Epidemic: Turning the Tide Together

Part 2:

Improving Effectiveness and Efficiency in the HIV Response

The global investment in the fight against HIV and AIDS has increased dramatically over the last decade. Investments in fighting HIV/AIDS offer exceptional return on investment, in terms of the number of lives saved for each dollar spent. Programmes and interventions are getting cheaper, and saving more and more lives, making the global HIV/AIDS response an increasingly attractive investment.