VIENNA — Activists and experts at the International AIDS Conference here said the human rights of people infected with HIV must be a priority if the spread of the virus that causes AIDS is to be stopped.
Human rights are the main theme of the 18th biennial event, which ends today. Another focus is the rapid spread of HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Participants in the conference said that rights are an essential part of any attempt to slow and reverse an epidemic that has so far claimed 25 million lives.
“We have to implement HIV prevention as a human right,” said Anna Shakarishvili, Ukraine coordinator for the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, also known as UNAIDS.
Rights are important, advocates said, because discrimination against people with HIV, intolerance toward gay men and women, and criminalization of intravenous drug use drive underground those in need of treatment or at risk of becoming infected.
Key to the success of HIV-prevention programs is involving the affected communities.
Meena Saraswathi Seshu, of the Indian organization SANGRAM, said encouraging sex workers to practice safe sex means respecting them and their opinions. In her work, she learned that female sex workers were more knowledgeable about men and their attitudes than she was.
“You give us the condoms and we’ll do the rest,” the sex workers told her.
Coercive measures don’t work, activists said. Ordinary people are going to have to give up their prejudices if the HIV plague is to be defeated.
“All people have rights, regardless of whom they have sex with,” said Roman Dudnik of the AIDS Foundation East-West.
Several studies published this week in The Lancet, a British medical journal, recommended that governments adopt non-coercive treatment programs for drug users and provide them with antiretroviral treatment if they are infected with HIV.
In a separate commentary, Lancet editors expressed support for the Vienna Declaration, a statement published last month calling for the decriminalization of illicit drug use.
