'Tis the season of the AIDS conference .... and meeting heroes ....

AIDS conferences are as much theatre as they are anything to do with real science or furthering the cause of people living with HIV .... my first experience was last year at the International AIDS conference in Toronto - a veritable circus for activist organisations, fringe groups and people who frankly just like to protest .... as well as a media love-fest for celebs, politicians and philanthropists. For every serious NGO, pharma company and scientist - there were groups such as grandmothers against AIDS, transvestites, transexuals, multisexuals and a whole bed-zone for sex workers of every shape, hue and flavour ....

The big conference this year is in Sydney in July, but there is also the PEPFAR shebang in Kigali in mid-June (on which more later since I'm actually going to that one) but to kick the season off this week is the South African AIDS conference in Durban - probably the most important national level conference in Africa ....

And with good reason .... South Africa has the largest number of HIV cases in the world .... and has both stories to be proud of as well as to wish swept under the carpet .... we've all heard the tales of Thabo Mbeki refusing to believe in HIV and stating that he doesn't even know anyone with AIDS, as well as our mad-as-a-hatter health minister Mantu Tshabalala Msimang who trashes ARVs and promotes garlic, lemons and the african potato ...

However - SA was also the host country for the 2000 International AIDS Conference (Durban) where for the first time the idea of ARV treatment for all was truly advocated for .... demanding decreases in the cost of treatment ... arguing on the basis of human rights that the developing world could not be ignored or used merely as a lab for drug testing without experiencing the benefits of such advances .....

SA is also the country which hosted the PEPFAR conference last year(Durban again) where the impact of this US funding body was properly debated and where we argued that rather than the US government being able to claim that the American people had out 1 million patients on treatment ... instead such funds should be used to actually strengthen health services and enable countries to put their own people on ARVs in a way that would be sustainable beyond George Bush ....

And its the home country for the TAC (Treatment Action Campaign) arguably the organisation who have done the most globally to spearhead the campaign to bring treatment to the developing world, to bring down the cost of drugs, to advocate for the rights of people living with HIV and to force a blinkered South African government to confront that they were allowing what some compare to a genocide to exist within the country ....

So we are all looking forward to this year's conference knowing that things are slowly beginning to change here (thanks in great part to the TAC amongst others) .... and proud that whatever we debate here will have massive impact on other national conferences in Africa and will form the basis for the big international conferences coming up ...

However when i walked onto my flight to Durban this morning ... i was gobsmacked to see that i was sitting next to THE Zackie Achmat (in economy no less!) - the founder of the TAC, one of Time magazine's Heroes and a Nobel Peace prize nominee .... sadly i was too travel sick to talk lots to him (i know most people grow out of it when they're 12 - but what can i do?!) .... and was frankly too shy to chit-chat with a man who is really one of my living heroes .... all i could do was thank him repeatedly for everything that he's done ... and ask him shamelessly for the cheesy photo below ....