HIV holistic health word cloud. Image: Nell Osborne, Salamander TrustNext week the annual International AIDS Conference opens in Durban, South Africa, attended by over 20,000 people from around the world. The scope of the conference alternates each year from being a pathogenesis conference with very little social science input, to the one this year which includes community issues as well as science. This one has three largely scientific tracks, two largely social political and economic tracks, and one “cross track”.
The conference theme this year is “Access, Equity, Rights Now” and there is already huge tension in the air around at least two issues. Firstly, there is the question of who may have these rights. At the UN High Level Meeting in June, there were considerable gains in recognition of women’s rights and the widespread harms of gender-based violence, such as in its capacity both to increase vulnerability to, and to result from, HIV. However, he meeting was also deeply marred by the exclusion of key populations - including lesbian, gay or bisexual people, trans* people, sex workers, people who use drugs, and others - from the process, and the limited recognition by UN and many governments alike of the issues these people face.
Secondly, there is the question of what aspects of this conference theme people might gain access to. There is tension here because it has now been recognised that HIV medication taken by someone when they don’t have HIV can protect them from acquiring it. So there is a huge push for roll-out of this Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), from scientists and community activists alike. This is so that anyone who may be vulnerable to acquiring HIV might avoid doing so. Yet here is a slippery slope scenario. I have described this scenario in an earlier article on openDemocracy before in the whole debate around treatment as prevention (TasP), where people with HIV, especially women in the case of “Option B+” are encouraged to take HIV medication primarily to protect others.
