In This Issue
"It's the fighting back. It's the building of places to care for the living and for the dying. It is courage, it is honor, it is integrity. It's people joining forces in a time of great need. It is hope, It's sharing the burden. It's people caring for their own and finding love, and surviving, and believing in the future even when we are hurting more than we have ever hurt before."
Chris Brownlie -- 1989
Welcome to the first edition of the AIDS2014 Black AIDS Daily. Nearly 12,000 participants from all over the world have come to Melbourne for the 20th International AIDS Conference (AIDS2014). This year's theme is Stepping up the Pace. As we have done for the last seven International AIDS Conferences (sixteen years), over the next five days we will be bringing you the latest research developments and share with you discussions about the status of the epidemic from leading researchers, clinicians, policy makers, activists and people living with HIV/AIDS.
The opening programs of International meetings like these usually start with a very formal introduction. The opening ceremonies of AIDS2014 on Sunday night, July 20th, began simply with "Welcome friends". The greeting was just what the body needed. The shocking murder of 298 people, including Joep Lange, past president of the International AIDS Society, WHO spokesperson Glen Thomas and other AIDS2014 delegates in the shooting down of flight MH17 has set the tone for this meeting. Many of us have been fighting through the shock and grief to find our way back to each other. No matter what else we might be—activists, scientists, PLWHA, journalists, policy maker—on Sunday night we needed to be friends and family.
When asked if the downing of MH17 would delay the opening of the 20th International AIDS Conference, organizers were quick and clear: "The conference will go on!"
In the words of Essex Hemphill:
When my brother fell
I picked up his weapons
and never once questioned
whether I could carry
the weight and grief,
the responsibility
he shouldered.
I never questioned whether I could aim
or be as precise as he.
I only knew he had fallen
and the passing ceremonies
marking his death
did not stop the war.
Nearly 25 years of fighting this war has taught us how to mourn and grieve, and carry on. We mourn and grieve for the lives lost on MH17. Our hearts and prayers are with their families—not just our colleagues, but all 298 families. Because when you do this work you know that we are all connected but will carry on because that is what our friends would have wanted us to do, that is what the world needs us to do. That is what we do!
In this issue Linda Villarosa, who has covered the International AIDS Conference for the Institute for TK years, reports on the Opening Ceremony. We also urge you to sign your name or your organization's name to the Melbourne Declaration. Dr. Carl Dieffenbach, Director of the Division of AIDS at NIAID, reflects on what it means to "step up the pace". We report on how the conference uses arts and culture to give voice to PLWHA and extend the AIDS movement to youth advocates around the globe. And NAIAD Director Dr. Tony Fauci talks about the implications of recent reports that the "Mississippi Baby," who seemed to have been cured of HIV but now has a detectable viral load.
Yours in the struggle,
Phill