News - National | 2017-07-24Page no: 7 byDenver Kisting

Bernard Haufiku

LINDA-GAIL Bekker, the president of the International AIDS Society (IAS), yesterday said crucial evidence is needed to inform global policy change on the HIV pandemic.

Bekker was speaking at the start of the ninth IAS conference on HIV science, which started in the French capital early yesterday.

According to her, impending anxiety about funding cuts has necessitated the establishment of how we use what we have in the wisest possible way.

The conference, also attended by health minister Bernard Haufiku and other ministry officials, brought together approximately 6 000 leading scientists, researchers and human immune-deficiency virus professionals from across the globe to take stock of the virus and its continued impact.

In the conference programme, Bekker said: Almost 15 years after Paris last hosted the conference, we return to the city renowned for groundbreaking discoveries in HIV science for the largest open scientific conference on HIV.

This year, it is more critical than ever to highlight the importance and impact of prioritising and investing in research. This will be demonstrated over the next three days, as leading investigators present novel science and new resolutions in HIV prevention, treatment and cure.

Bekker, a South African professor and the deputy director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cape Town, said at the start of a session on HIV and how it relates to young people that the challenges persist to scale up timely HIV testing, treatment and quality care for children and adolescents worldwide.

During the second session, which dealt with the challenges key populations men who have sex with men, sex workers, members of the transgender community, people who inject drugs and people detained in correctional facilities face, Tiffany Lillie, senior technical adviser at an international HIV organisation dealing with these communities emphasised that the care continuum consists of prevention, testing, treatment and viral load suppression.

Lillie said there is an increasing need to focus on key populations in particular in the fight against HIV because they carry a disproportionate burden of HIV as a total of 44% of new infections arise among these communities. In Africa, 25% of new infections are from key populations.

During this same session, Dr Cameron Wolf, an international infectious disease specialist, said key populations remain subjected to pervasive stigma, violence and criminalisation.

In Namibia, consensual anal sexual intercourse between two males remains a criminal offence in terms of the country's common law, despite no successful prosecutions.

This is generally regarded as a benign crime, although human rights activists have criticised it as being unconstitutional.

Other conference objectives include accelerating basic science and clinical innovation for the development and application of new HIV prevention, treatment and care technologies to advance precision medicine, strengthening the implementation science and research agenda to address key barriers and challenges structural, service delivery and policy across HIV to cascade in a variety of epidemic scenarios and amplify the synergies between HIV and co-infections, as well as emerging co-morbidities and other non-communicable diseases.

Furthermore, strengthening research towards cure/treatment remission and vaccine, and demonstrating the links between HIV and other public health and human rights emergencies and identifying strategies for integrated responses, are also on the agenda.

The conference, which ends on Thursday, is organised by IAS, in partnership with France REcherche Nord & sud Sida-hiv Hpatites.

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Global conference on HIV starts - Namibian