The international AIDS conference has returned to the US for the first time since 1990. More than 25,000 scientists, practitioners, government officials, activists, and individuals living with HIV from around the world will gather in Washington, DC, on July 22 - 27, 2012. The theme this year is "Turning the Tide Together."
Eli Coleman, PhD, and Walter Bockting, PhD, will both be presenting at the conference this year. The conference objective is to bring together leaders that can directly impact the future of HIV in the United States and around the world, "By acting decisively on recent scientific advances in HIV treatment and biomedical prevention, the momentum for a cure, and the continuing evidence of the ability to scale-up key interventions in the most-needed settings, we now have the potential to end the HIV epidemic."
If you are not attending the conference, you can view videos online featuring conference highlights and interviews with key speakers and delegates on the conference YouTube channel
The selection of Washington DC is significant because HIV rates in the district have reached epidemic levels and in 2009 President Barack Obama overturned the US entry and immigration ban for individuals living with HIV. The US had been ruled out as a possible venue for the international AIDS conference because of the ban.
In addition to the conference, the AIDS Memorial Quilt will be on display in Washington DC across 50 locations. Today the quilt has 48,000 panels and takes up 1.3 million square feet, in DC 35,200 panels will be on display, 8,800 different panels each day.
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