Every two years, the International AIDS Society holds its AIDS meeting and it seems like only yesterday that I was at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, adding to my experience attending many past IACs in Florence, Amsterdam, Berlin (the most depressing one), Vancouver (the most exciting one) and Geneva. This year, the XVII conference will be in Mexico City during August 3-8. If you are like me, and not scheduled to go this year, it is worth noting that the conference will be well-covered by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation through kaisernetwork.org.
Anyone interested in receiving a free daily update email that contains a summary and links to any online coverage may sign up with kaisernetwork.org and, according to a resent Kaiser email update, can also get:
- Live and tape-delayed webcasts and transcripts of each day’s sessions, including the opening and closing sessions, all plenary sessions, and selected other sessions and press conferences;
- English- and Spanish-language audio podcasts of select sessions;
- Slide presentations from select conference sessions;
- Daily narrated video highlights of conference developments;
- Extended news coverage in the Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, including summaries of coverage from international news sources and newly-released studies; and
- Interviews with newsmakers and journalists to summarize conference developments.
The IACs are large and well-attended. Over the years I watched with disappointment in 1993 in Berlin as speakers acknowledged real treatment to be far off, and with joy in 1996 in Vancouver as Dr. David Ho presented research that would be, if not the undoing of the epidemic, an ultimate game-changer in protease inhibitors and anti-viral therapy. I have no idea what will be coming out of Mexico City, but it will be worth watching.
