Richard Lord & Dix­ie Ann Dick­son

Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Amery Browne says the "H" in HIV must al­so mean "hope." Browne, a for­mer So­cial De­vel­op­ment min­is­ter and tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Aids Co-or­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee (NACC), was ad­dress­ing the 28 In­ter­na­tion­al Aids Con­fer­ence in Vi­en­na, Aus­tria, on Tues­day.

"There is hope in the grow­ing in­volve­ment of per­sons liv­ing with the virus as a great part of the so­lu­tion to the pan­dem­ic," he said. Browne said there was "hope in that many par­lia­men­tar­i­ans are now will­ing to lis­ten and be­come po­ten­tial re­spon­ders. "There is hope that good ex­em­plars and lead­ers on this is­sue con­tin­ue to emerge and should be fa­cil­i­tat­ed and en­cour­aged," he added.

He said while par­lia­men­tar­i­ans had not been the fastest re­spon­ders to the glob­al HIV cri­sis, "we wel­come with re­newed hope the di­rect ad­vo­ca­cy for us, to us and among us to be a force for pos­i­tive change." He said there was need for more pub­lic demon­stra­tions of com­mit­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to Browne there must be:

�2 em­brac­ing and open­ly en­gag­ing peo­ple liv­ing with HIV;

�2 more use of so­cial net­works and text mes­sag­ing to reach our youth;

�2 al­lo­ca­tion of more re­sources to­wards com­pre­hen­sive (HIV) pre­ven­tion work in pre-schools, schools, work­places and tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tions with the "most at risk" groups; and

�2 more ur­gency to im­prove leg­isla­tive frame­works.

The con­fer­ence which be­gan on Sun­day ends to­mor­row.