HIV – Hope and the Way Forward
By Alexandra Coria (Friday, Aug 13, 2010)
A couple weeks ago, I was lucky enough to have a poster at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria. This conference is amazing – everyone is there from all parts of the AIDS movement: investigators, advocates, NGOs, everyone. And, coming out of it, there are two things I want to highlight for the PHR student community:
First, the lifting of the AIDS travel ban was a huge step forward for the US, and because of it, in 2012 we’re finally going to be able to hold the International AIDS Conference on US soil, in our nation’s capital.
But even though people with HIV can come into the US, a lot of at-risk populations still can’t. People with a history of sex work or drug use offenses are still going to run into major visa and entry issues, so we in the human rights community have our work cut out for us. We only have a scant 2 years to get the US government to lift its substance use and “moral turpitude” travel restrictions (yes, that’s the actual legal language). Having an AIDS conference in our country but not allowing the most at-risk populations to attend would be a disgrace to our country’s AIDS record, and a violation of the human rights of hundreds if not thousands of people.
Second, the first successful proof-of-concept trial for a vaginal microbicide brought us this much closer to the long-sought female-controlled AIDS prevention mechanism. This field is exploding, and holds real hope for new prevention strategies until a highly effective vaccine is available. (And, as I heard at one session, the ladies liked using the gel – they didn’t want to give it back at the end of the trial. Even better.)
So, the bottom line is, there’s reason for hope, but we’ve got serious problems to solve before then. So let’s get on it.
