AIDS 2010 CALLED BOTH MEDICAL AND POLITICAL SUMMIT
Baku, July 16 (AZERTAC). The Chair of the 18th International AIDS Conference in Vienna says the gathering is both an important health and political summit, VOA reports. Dr. Julio Montaner, President of the International AIDS Society, says the conference remains relevant 30 years into the epidemic.
“I think…the fact that we continue to attract the kind of numbers that we are attracting provides the answer to your question,” he says. About 25,000 people are expected to attend, including some 2,000 journalists.
From a personal perspective, Montaner says, “This is the single most important public health conference ever held year after year, but you know we hold it every second year. We bring together not just medical science, basic science, but we are actually bringing every discipline. That includes anything from politicians to social scientists to community activists to persons affected with HIV and, of course, the more traditional medical groups.”
It really should be regarded, he says, as an “AIDS summit taking place, where we really take the opportunity to assess where we are at and what the next steps should be.”
