Saturday, August 12, 2006

Materials from the International AIDS Conference in Toronto

The 16th International AIDS Conference which begins this weekend in Toronto is expected to attract more than 20,000 delegates. It is one of the world's largest scientific congresses, though its scope goes way beyond science to touch upon social and legal policy.

There will thousands of presentations on potential new drugs, the emergence of resistance to the existing selection of antiretroviral drugs, and the legal dimensions of the worldwide eipdemic.

According to Resourceshelf, the Kaiser Family Foundation is making session webcasts, podcasts, and interviews freely available online.

As well, presentation abstracts are also being made available online from the official conference website. One of the presentation categories, or "tracks", concerns policy and legal issues:

"This track will highlight progress, lessons learned, and challenges in HIV/AIDS-related policy and advocacy. It will examine how policies and programmes are developed, debated, implemented, and evaluated, addressing the roles and responsibilities of all parties. Among the topics to be debated are the role of advocacy in shaping policy, the central role of human rights and ethics in the policy and programmatic response to HIV/AIDS, and the role of law, regulation, and codes of practice. Sessions will focus on policy development and decision-making; analysis and evaluation of successful policies; human rights and legal and ethical issues; capacity development; commitment and accountability; meaningful involvement of people living with HIV/AIDS and vulnerable populations in policy development and implementation; and interactions between HIV/AIDS and other policy areas, such as gender, race, development and poverty alleviation, security/conflicts, education, social welfare, substance use, incarceration, globalisation, public health, sex work and sexual minorities, migrant workers, and violence."

One the legal front, a prominent Canadian player is the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network which will be making many presentations during the conference.

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posted by Michel-Adrien at 7:19 pm

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