Collision of Worlds at Vienna’s World AIDS Conference

Rev Alan Bain of the Christian HIV/AIDS Alliance: writes a blog post from his time at the recent World AIDS Conference in Vienna.

Commenting on the cultural programme and the emphasis of the conference, Rev. Bain says

the schizophrenic attitude to the disease here in the West, where our loss of long dead pop stars and the almost glamorous dimension of AIDS now takes higher priority than 40 million infected people living with HIV throughout the world.

The big challenge for Christian responses to AIDS was given by UNAIDS’s Deputy Executive Director, Ms Jan Beagle who cautioned for faith groups to stay engaged.

“You are the advocates and practitioners. You have the networks on the ground and you can energise social movements... the poor still die while the rich live. Global AIDS is at tipping point. Although we have seen a 17% drop in AIDS infections worldwide we still reach only a fraction of those infected. For every one treated a further 5 are infected and still, 5,500 people die of AIDS each day.” The real barriers, she said, are not technical or medical but political and cultural. “We need political courage to break the trajectory of AIDS.” she concluded.

Read the full post at www.chaa.info