The 12th International Conference on AIDS and STDs in Africa opened on Sunday evening in the very modern, air-conditioned and well-equipped Ouaga 2000 conference centre just outside Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, with around 4,000 attenders from Burkina and across the continent.
The conference theme, which is officially translated as "Communities Commit Themselves" has a particular resonance here, since the main emphasis of Burkina Faso's response to HIV and AIDS has been community mobilisation to limit the impact of the epidemic on society. Articulate and critical community voices are being heard, even in the official opening ceremony, and community activities are a major track within the conference.
While the scientific content of the conference appears limited, there does appear to be a strong focus on addressing specifically African issues including those associated with efforts to gain wider access to antiretroviral treatment. This is very much a conference "organised by Africans, for Africans". There is a great deal of emphasis on the relationship between the response to AIDS and wider development issues, a point stressed by the President of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré, in the speech which concluded the opening ceremony.
Speaker after speaker has referred to the impact of AIDS in reversing hard-won development gains. For example, in Burkina Faso itself, life expectancy at birth which was 53 in 1996, is projected to fall to 45.7 by 2015 with 730,000 orphans (children who lost their mother or both parents) in a population in the region of 10 million. Without AIDS, life expectancy would have risen by then to 61.5 years.
Although this conference is bilingual the status of Burkina Faso as part of La Francophonie is very clear. French Health Minister Bernard Kouchner, well known as a founder of both Medecins sans Frontières and Medecins du Monde, delivered a ringing speech which had some uncomfortably colonialist overtones. Kouchner repeated and developed earlier calls he has made for universal access to antiretroviral treatment for people with HIV/AIDS, stressing the role of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria in making this possible. However, he went on to couple this with a plan to promote twinning between European and north American hospitals and those in countries worst affected by AIDS which sounds to many people like a throw-back to earlier days of neo-colonialist 'overseas aid' that many countries have struggled for years to remedy.
Other contributions included a call from Dr Peter Piot of UNAIDS for a further large expansion in the scale of the response to HIV and AIDS and a long and very lively speech from the former Ghanaian president, Jerry Rawlings, mainly on the need for African men to take responsibility for the well-being of women and children.
The conference continues until Thursday 14 December and further reports will appear on aidsmap during the week.