Global AIDS conference in Vienna to focus on Eastern Europe

Mar 10, 2010, 13:05 GMT

Vienna - Rising HIV infections in Eastern Europe and Central Asia are one key issue to be discussed at this year's international AIDS conference in Vienna in July, organizers said Wednesday.

The biennial event is set to draw 25,000 participants and is organized by HIV experts with support from UN organizations.

In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the occurrence of HIV has almost doubled since 2001.

'To break the trajectory of the HIV epidemic in Eastern Europe, we must stop infections among injecting drug users and their partners,' said Michel Sidibe, the head of UNAIDS, the United Nations programme on prevention and treatment.

Conference chair Julio Montaner called for needle exchange programmes and drug substitution therapies to be implemented more widely.

But countries such as Russia do not allow methadone substitution. The method had not yet proven to be efficient, the head of Russia's Anti-Narcotics Service, Victor Ivanov, told reporters Tuesday in Vienna.

The conference is also set to focus on sub-Saharan Africa, where 33.4 million people are estimated to be infected.

Of the 7,000 who contract the virus every day around the world, 1,500 live in South Africa, according to Sidibe.

Participants in Vienna needed to send a clear signal to governments that have so far not honoured pledges to support prevention and treatment, said Montaner, the head of the International AIDS Society.

'People who made promises are happy to forget,' he said.

The conference is scheduled to run from July 18 to 23.