Aids Conference 2010 emphasizes relationship between Human Rights and HIV

August 5, 2010 - Human Rights and HIV. About 20 thousand people who work with HIV and AIDS, including politicians, legislators, professionals, researchers and affected by HIV and representatives of other social movements from 190 countries met in Vienna, during the XVIII International AIDS Conference, which had as theme "Rights Here, Rights Now", highlighting the importance of respecting human rights of the most vulnerable, as crucial to confront the HIV epidemic.

During the six-day conference, held between June 18 th and 23 rd, issues such as prevention, treatment, care and support to injecting drug users in prisons were widely debated. The importance of informing the people most vulnerable in a clear and didactic way on HIV and the need to provide treatment and to end discrimination against injecting drug users were also central themes of the conference. " This is not the beginning of the end, it is just the end of the beginning… Clear scientific evidence shows the more we offer substitution therapies and provide clean needles,the more drug use goes down, not up", said the former president of the United States, Bill Clinton, who attended the event.

Another theme of the conference was to point out the need to recognize the problem and take effective measures to prevent HIV in prisons, where the rate is almost 100 times greater than among the general community. More vulnerable persons deprived of freedom also suffer high rates of infectious diseases such as hepatitis and tuberculosis. As a way to alert to these problems, UNODC launched a tool kit with guidelines for conducting a situation assessment and verification of claims for the prevention and treatment of HIV, AIDS and tuberculosis in prisons.

The United Nations, through the United Nations Programme on HIV / AIDS (UNAIDS) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), supported the AIDS 2010 Conference. The UNODC is the lead agency of UNAIDS for the prevention, treatment, care and support in relation to HIV and injecting drug users and prison environments. The office operates in 55 countries identified as priorities in various regions of the world: Africa, Eastern Europe, Central and South Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, helping countries to offer drug users, persons deprived of liberty and people vulnerable to human trafficking, comprehensive services and based on evidence related to HIV. See the balance of the Conference. Click here for more information

All stories