FROM PARIS WITH YAGG

During the opening session of the 18th International Aids Conference, researchers and physicians joined their voices with activists, and used figures from their studies to call for the strengthening of a plan in response to the HIV epidemic, on all fronts.

The room is huge, just like the task that motivated everyone gathered inside. While some participants have been busy for the past two days already, the conference officially began the evening of Sunday, July 18, in Vienna, Austria. Speakers on the podium reminded participants of the major issues that relate to the response that is nowadays given against the epidemic. They also supported the activists’ demands with concrete figures. Activists took the stage at the beginning of the ceremony. (more...)

Professor Willy Rozenbaum, President of the French National AIDS Council (CNS), and who has been involved in the fight against AIDS since 1981, is not happy and he wants people to know it.  In an urgent manner, the CNS organized yesterday a press conference to rant about the draft version of 2010-2014’s French National Plan against AIDS. According to Rozenbaum, the project “does not meet the current challenges of the epidemic” and therefore a thorough revision of the document is needed. As stated in the recommendations of the CNS and of the National Health Conference, that issued their analysis of the project yesterday morning, the French Department of Health and the French government do not engage in any politics that could allow to “rapidly decrease the numbers of new infections in all population groups”. (more...)