AIDS conference calls for action, not words

The event has been pushed off the international headlines by a war in Lebanon and terror plot in Britain. But the problems currently under discussion by over twenty-five thousand participants in Canada this week may in the long run prove more crucial to our survival. The issue is AIDS and News Five’s Kendra Griffith reports from Toronto.

Kendra Griffith, Reporting
According to the 2006 UNAIDS report, there are thirty-eight point six million people infected globally, four point one million new infections in 2005, and two point eight million dead in the last year alone … It is these numbers that have brought people from all over the world to Toronto, Canada for the sixteenth International AIDS Conference.

Dr. Helene Gayle, Co-Chair, AIDS 2006
?Today, twenty-five years into this epidemic, we have a real opportunity to deliver like never before. We have more resources, more knowledge, more political commitments than ever before, but still the epidemic continues to out-pace us. So it is time for us to assure that promises made are promises kept. We must demand action over rhetoric and evidence over ideology. It is ?Time to Deliver.?

Kendra Griffith
?AIDS 2006 features scientists, activists, world leaders, infected and affected persons exchanging ideas and opinions on HIV treatment and prevention … knowledge that organisers want participants to take home, and put into practice.?

For Belizeans attending AIDS 2006, the conference offers an opportunity to strengthen programmes already in existence.

Rodel Beltran, Belizean Delegate
?I think we have delivered. The Alliance against AIDS is comfortable in saying that that deliverable has been Anti-retroviral medication, and we are comfortable with that.?

Ruth Jaramillo, Belizean Delegate
?Perhaps the strongest gain that we have gotten so far is the opportunity to network with other countries to get insight on what lessons they have learnt in their response, and how we can assist each other.?

And with fourteen thousand new HIV infections being reported daily, working together is more important than ever.

Reporting from the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada, I am Kendra Griffith for News Five.

Kendra’s attendance at the Toronto conference was made possible through the support of the Caribbean Broadcast Media Partnership and the Kaiser Family Foundation.