TORONTO — World governments were exhorted yesterday to step up to the plate and make good on funding promises and the social change needed to stop the spread of HIV-AIDS and provide lifelong treatment for all infected with the virus.
The clarion calls came during the closing session of the week-long International AIDS Conference, the 16th such gathering of scientists and activists since the early days of the AIDS pandemic.
Stephen Lewis, the UN Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa, delivered an oratorical barn burner in which he excoriated the government of South Africa, slammed the G-8 countries for not living up to AIDS funding promises and insisted the tragic spread of HIV cannot be halted until gender inequality is righted.
Lewis admitted that in the battle against AIDS, the factor that makes him feel “most helpless and most enraged” is the inequality of women and how that puts them at high risk of becoming infected through rape or by partners who refuse to practise safe sex.
“If ever there was a cause to mobilize AIDS activists around the world, this is it,” Lewis said of the enormous problem of violence against women, which too often leads to transmission in countries where infection rates are high. While he noted that sexual violence is not unique to Africa, “in Africa, the violence and the virus go together.”
Though largely spared in the closing ceremonies, the Canadian government took a pounding throughout the conference.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s refusal to attend the opening ceremony and the government’s apparent hesitancy to renew the licence for Vancouver’s safe-injection site for intravenous drug users gave rise to heated rhetoric about the government’s commitment to the fight against HIV and AIDS. Then the Conservatives scrapped a plan to announce additional AIDS-related assistance during the conference.
“That conference in our view was becoming a place where you couldn’t have a rational discussion,” Health Minister Tony Clement said yesterday in Nova Scotia.
“I think things were way over the top, at least from some of the so-called experts and people that like to have an opinion on these things.
“The fact of the matter is that Canada was at the conference. We put $6 million to fund the conference. We were present everywhere and I was there for five days out of six.”
So were roughly 24,000 delegates — scientists, activists, people living with HIV-AIDS — and thousands of journalists.
The conference also drew stars — former U.S. president Bill Clinton, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, and actor Richard Gere, to name a few.
If Canada was let off the hook yesterday, South Africa took its place.
The government of President Thabo Mbeki has enraged the scientific and public health world by initially denying the link between HIV and AIDS and then resisting the importation of antiretroviral drugs, despite the fact that an estimated 5.5 million people in his country are infected.
Mbeki’s health minister, Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, promotes the use of lemons, garlic and beet root as treatments for AIDS.
“The government has a lot to atone for,” said Lewis.
lfpress.ca
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