HIV 2008

The AIDS 2008 17th annual international HIV/AIDS conference kicked off today in Mexico City. I haven't really looked through the schedule yet, but I imagine some topics of interest will be progress and plans for scaling up antiretroviral therapy (ART) programs in developing countries, the US's renewed and expanded commitment to PEPFAR, and controversies/cultural issues related to the recent studies showing a 60% risk reduction in HIV aquisition for circucised males. Most of the talks are available as podcasts courtesy of the Kaiser Family Foundation and can be found here. I enjoyed listening to some of these last year and expect to again this year. I'm particularly interested in the ones from the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance's preconference (available here). This is a network of Christian churches and organizations who believe that living out the Gospel in our current world means engaging with the AIDS pandemic.

I will be interested in hearing the practical suggestions from these talks because our church currently has a team in Tanzania that is investigating how we can partner with and support St. Peter's Anglican Church in the village of Chamwino as they seek to serve their community which is affected by AIDS and other issues of poverty, education, and economic development.

On a kind of related note the 2008 Principles of HIV & STD Research Course was held the past two weeks here at the University of Washington. I was able to sneak away from the lab to attend a couple of the lectures, but one that was particularly interesting was given by Dr. Elioda Tumwesigye from Uganda. Dr. Tumesigye became personally involved in fighting HIV after losing his older brother to the disease in the early days of the epidemic (the first recoginition of the AIDS epidemic in Africa was in Rakai, Uganda in 1982, only a year after the first reports in the US). He had attended the UW course ten years ago and is now a member of the Ugandan parliament where he chairs the comittee on the government's response to AIDS. He talked about home-based HIV counseling and testing as a tool for community education/awareness as well as a portal of entry into the healthcare system for those who test positive. Many African countries are now providing free access to ART, but in order for this to be effective several things have to happen: People have to want to know their status (education, overcome stigma, believe that HIV is not a death sentence), they need to have access to testing, and they need to have transportation to the major cities where these centers are located, or there needs to be a massive scale up of health infrastructure (trained nurses, CD4 monitoring, etc) to bring these programs to the village level. I look forward to working with some people from our church and the church in Tanzania as we explore how to overcome some of these barriers.