The Conference took place in Mexico from 3-8^th August, this year. It works as an integrating force for AIDS campaigners across the globe, where individuals collaborate to plan the course of action for the Aids campaign’s future, review its progress in the last couple of years. The core components of the Conference Programme were science, community and leadership. The conference provides a forum in which: key scientific information on HIV and AIDs, as well as gaps of knowledge within it are presented; strong evidence is presented to influence leaders to do more; awareness is raised within the global community to reduce the stigma associated with HIV; an emphatic response towards those affected by the disease is encouraged; and widening participation of marginalised social groups in the conference.

The conference provided an exciting chance to get involved in the forefront of an international campaign which addresses a pivotal issue in society today. To get involved or learn more, simply visit the Conference website or get in touch with Ruth on her blog to hear a firsthand experience, and to ask any questions.

Many say that abstinence only programmes do not work and in fact increase the chances of contracting HIV because safe sex is not taught. Others feel that if one does take home the message of the programme, if is the best preventative because it leaves no room for sexual transmission.

We want your views on whether you think stress on abstinence policies is effective and appropriate in the fight against aids or whether ‘these abstinence-only programs leave Uganda’s children at risk of HIV…and abstinence messages should complement other HIV-prevention strategies, not undermine them[i],’ as Jonathan Cohen, researcher with Human Rights Watch’s HIV/AIDS Program says.

So the question lies: do ‘abstinence only’ and ‘be faithful’ programmes work?

People abstain till marriage and are faithful, but the same cannot be said of their spouses. More often than not it is the man who introduces the HIV virus. Once married, a woman must yield to sex when demanded and in many cultures simply does not have the power to convince her HIV positive husband to use condoms. Many individuals are forced to sell sex and such HIV prevention programmes are inadequate as they refuse to inform the public on how to protect themselves from the virus if so required. Aside from that, abstinence programmes are grossly misleading and have been proven not to work.

In India the only sexual contact 75% of HIV positive women have

had is with their husbands ~ Positive Women’s Network[i]

For more information visit:

· http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=how_bushs_aids_program_is_failing_africans

· http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/05/alterman_ignorance.html

Patent pools have long been called for by Student Stop AIDS campaigners and the wider AIDS lobby as they offer a practical way to reward pharmaceuticals for their research and innovation as well as getting affordable, appropriate treatment to those who need it most. This initiative has been championed by the UK government and warmly welcomed by those involved in the fight to increase access to medcines. Ellen ‘t Hoen, Director of Policy at Médecins Sans Frontiers’ Access Campaign believes “UNITAID has shown great vision and understanding of what needs to be done – this could potentially have a big impact, both for access to medicines and for medical innovation”.

Patent Pools are a one stop shop where licences to produce drugs are centrally managed. Pharmaceuticals, and other patent holders like universities, negotiate an agreement to hand over the rights of their drugs to the pool, and then low and middle income countries can come to the pool to acquire the right to use those licences. This method holds the prospect of developing countries saving millions of pounds and thousands of lives by making generic versions of new drugs available without the standard 20 year wait for patents to expire.

Current patent protection laws mean WHO-recommended treatment costs between $613 and $1,022 per year as opposed to older, lower quality first line treatments which now cost only $87 per year thanks to increased competition. Patent pools can foster that same competition for all anti-retroviral drugs.

UNITAID is an international agency which was created by Brazil, Chile, France, Norway and the United Kingdom in 2006 and uses taxes on air tickets to finance sustainable methods in facilitating access to treatment facilitating access to treatment or the world’s greatest pandemics; HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

Their new initiative holds huge potential to deliver access to the vital medicines needed across the world to ensure people aren’t dying because of the exorbitant price of a pill. The Stop AIDS Campaign strongly supports UNITAID’s innovative step and looks forward to seeing the implementation of a strong patent pool. supported by all governments and pharmaceuticals.

Read the original text of the UNITAID resolution here.

The summit confirmed Stop AIDS campaigners’ fears by failing to take any concrete steps to deliver their promises, and even completely failed to mention some of their previous pledges; last year’s commitments to contribute to the $1.5 billion required for prevention of mother to child transmission services by 2010 and the $1.5 billion needed for maternal and child health care and voluntary family planning vanished from sight.

The 2007 G8 summit’s vague declaration to spend $60 billion fighting HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and strengthening health systems ‘over the coming years’ has been watered down during this year’s meeting in Toyako, Japan. The money, which will now be spent over the next 5 years rather than by 2010, falls $116 billion short of UNAIDS and WHO estimated resource needs.

Discontent amongst a coalition of HIV/AIDS & health organizations is also rife as the G8 made a hypocritical restatement of the 2005 commitment to reach universal access to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care by 2010. Whilst this re-commitment is welcome, the G8 completely failed to recognise the necessity to quadruple HIV/AIDS resource expenditures in order to achieve it. Additional disappointment met the G8’s vague promise to ‘work towards’ reaching the WHO threshold of 2.3 professional health workers per 1000 people because it wasn’t backed up with adequate funding.

The pledge to ‘review’ HIV travel restrictions particularly in Russia and the US has also been seen as completely undermining original promises to eliminate them altogether and disgustingly allows for violations on the human rights of HIV positive persons.

Stop AIDS campaigners are justified in feeling betrayed by the G8’s failure to deliver any details over a monitoring mechanism and a lack of timetables for delivery. The $60 billion pledge over the next 5 years to tackle the combination of HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB & health systems is an embarrassment in comparison to the $65 billion necessary for fighting HIV/AIDS alone over the next 3 years. This shortfall will only lead to future costs, not only in human life but also in global expenditure – treating another generation betrayed by our leaders’ broken promises.

The most powerful again cynically failed to keep their word to the most vulnerable; a failure that is costing thousands of lives every day. However, the fight will go on, and we must all demand that these commitments are readdressed at the UN high level meeting on the Millennium Development Goals which takes place this September.

An ambiguous pledge made by the Group of Eight countries in 2007 to spend £60 billion ‘over the coming years’ tackling Malaria, Tuberculosis, AIDS, and strengthening healthcare systems in developing countries is being reinterpreted. The ‘coming years’ now looks set to be stretched to mean the money will be spent across an eight year period as opposed to the required £65 billion over the next three years for HIV and AIDS alone recommended by UNAIDS.

Further fears that the G8 leaders may be set to completely abandon the 2005 Gleneagles commitments of universal access to treatment by 2010 provoked a letter from the Chair of the Stop Aids Campaign, Ken Bluestone, ‘calling for the UK government to show real leadership at this time.’ The letter reminds Gordon Brown that access to treatment, prevention and care for HIV and AIDS sufferers is not only a G8 and an UN commitment but also a Labour Party manifesto commitment and insisted that ‘The UK must galvanise support from the other G8 leaders to ensure that the world is not disappointed by yet another broken promise.’ Omission of the 2010 deadline from the agenda is said to ‘not only deprive those in immediate need but also lead to increased costs in the future.’

The summit, which takes place in Hokkaido Toyako, Japan this weekend, will be watched closely by over 80 UK based NGOs and Trade Unions which make up the coalition.

For every 20 people who start anti-retroviral treatment, 50 more are newly infected. Statistics like this led participants to emphasise the necessity for greater commitment to prevention efforts. It was said that not enough has been done to overcome the difficulties vulnerable groups such as men who have sex with men and intravenous drug users face in accessing services.

Availability of services which prevent mother to child transmission increased impressively in Botswana, Thailand and the Bahamas but a global increase from 14% in 2005 to only 34% in 2007 proved a disappointment – especially considering the programme’s cost effectiveness and the reality that one in six of all new infections are transmitted from mother to child.

With less than 40% of young persons holding an accurate and complete knowledge of HIV and AIDS, doubts have were raised about our chances of achieving 95% awareness in 15-24 year olds by 2010.

That only 30% of people living with HIV/AIDS are receiving anti-retroviral drugs and only 31% of those infected with both TB and HIV have access to their necessary treatments (despite increased availability of affordable TB treatments) were core concerns.

Ironically the issue of travel bans on people living with HIV and AIDS was also underlined by countries such as Mexico and EL Salvador who highlighted the complaints of many delegates who had to fight through US bureaucracy and visa restrictions to simply attend the event.

Although the alarming rise of HIV in Russia, China, Indonesia and Ukraine were disheartening the potential of well designed and properly funded interventions were demonstrated by the explosion in access to treatment from almost nothing to 88% in Namibia and from 1% to 60% in Rwanda.

The MDG review which takes place on 25th September will collate information gained in this meeting to assess the extent to which the world is on track for the 2015 deadline. Whilst progress is being made, it is evident that prevention methods will need to be seriously stepped up in order to reach the UN’s self-created goals.

This hub is part of a number of other ‘mini-conferences’ which will take place across the globe. Led by Nick Pahl, Consortium members and students from Stop Aids and Medsin are invited to engage in discussions which follow screenings from selected conference sessions. Mike Podmore and Claire Morris from the Care and Support working group will be presenting in Mexico in the Global Village. Look out for potential changes in date and a possible Oxford based hub. Please contact Sabrina@aidsconsortium.org.uk for more details.

Winners Tyler O’Callaghan, team Tri247 and Kate Pickard completed their categories in 49 minutes 43 seconds, 53 minutes 25 seconds and 55 minutes 1 second respectively. More than 200 people took part including the Green Kings, the SPW UK team, Nottingham and Sheffield University who contributed towards the amazing total of almost £10 000 for the Student Stop Aids Campaign.

Many thanks to all who ran, cycled, swam and donated. A special recognition should be give to Sheffield University who managed to raise almost £1000. The event was so successful plans for the 2009 event are already gathering pace!

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Gillian Merron specifically mentioned the impact of student campaigners on the shaping of the strategy, and indeed, the priorities for action do answer a lot of the demands the Stop AIDS campaign and Student Stop AIDS Societies were calling for.

Universal access is not limited to treatment, but widened to include prevention, care and support services. The strategy stresses the importance of equality of access, highlighting the need to focus specific attention on vulnerable and marginalised groups – in particular addressing our demand for gender-sensitivity. DFID acknowledge the role that other government departments such as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office must play in the implementation and monitoring of the strategy. The paper commits to addressing the critical health care worker shortage which the campaign flagged as being crucial to the response.

However, the lack of an AIDS specific spending target for the next three years puts the government’s commitment to its promise of achieving universal access by 2010 into question. Furthermore, the scope and ambition of the priorities for action contained in the report do not seem to be matched by the funding commitment. The Stop AIDS Campaign has been calling for £2.5bn over the next 3 years for HIV alone. UNAIDS has stated that current global resources for AIDS need to be quadrupled if Universal Access by 2010 is to be achieved . Providing £1 billion a year for Health Systems and Services in general without specifics on how this will be targeted to HIV and AIDS raises concern that it will not be enough to deliver the Universal Access commitment by 2015, never mind 2010.

Further questions surround DFID’s commitment to working with others to reduce drug prices. What this will mean in reality is yet to been seen – there was no reference to our call for the development of a patent pool to ease the production and distribution of life-saving medicines. In the past, Hillary Benn, former Minister for International Development, has said that the UK supports Thailand’s efforts to utilise the flexibilities which allow developing countries to import cheaper generic drugs. The current strategy makes no mention of importing or exporting drugs in this way, an omission which sends a worrying signal to countries attempting to use these provisions to meet their public health needs.

The inclusion of the UK’s commitment to spend £8.5 billion on education is welcome as it acknowledges the power of education as a prevention tool, building knowledge and helping overcome stigma and discrimination. But that £8.5 billion is money for all kinds of education support – how much of it will go on sexual reproductive health and rights? What kind of education programmes will it be spent on?

Whilst there is much to praise in the strategy there are numerous questions to be answered. Many will be answered by the monitoring and evaluation framework which DFID is developing to measure the strategy’s success. This document must be published, and the performance indicators it contains must be rigorous enough to truly test the government’s commitment to creating significant change on the ground.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Gillian Merron insists that the focus is on results. That’s very welcome, but in order to assess results we need annual impact assessments to judge the effectiveness of the strategy. Without this there will be a lack of transparency on how the UK has maintained its international leadership and commitment to achieving Universal Access. Without published annual impact assessments how will we know the UK is living up to its promises? As the government knows, throughout the transformation of this policy into practice, we will be watching.

Follow this link to read the Stop AIDS Campaign’s official response and see what DFID had to say in reply to our scorecard campaign (not alot).