Exhibit Offers View Into The World Of An African AIDS Patient

Some of the world’s greatest minds, including activists and community health care leaders, will be gathering in Toronto for the International AIDS Conference, which kicks off on Sunday.

While the gathering will be an important opportunity for experts to discuss how to stop the spread of the disease and how to better care for those who have already contracted it, the conference will also give everyday people a chance to better understand the struggles of Africans living with the virus – sub-Saharan Africa has been hardest hit by the disease that’s orphaned some 13 million children in the region.

A World Vision exhibit at University and Adelaide, which is part of the conference, provides a glimpse into the world of an African teen named Olivia (pictured), who contracted the disease when she was raped and impregnated by an HIV-positive man.

“It was very moving to sort of step into another world,” Sonja Free said after she walked through the exhibit, which also includes a visit to an African health clinic to take an HIV test.

“Nobody spoke to me. Just, you know, handed me a piece of paper and then I was told go sit over in another section,” Free added.

Many of the events part of the 2006 AIDS Conference are free to the public and a number of high-profile guests will be attending, including Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Richard Gere and Alicia Keys.

“The public can attend and listen to some very interesting discussions that will be held between and among scientists, community people and political leaders,” the conference’s vice chair Ron Rosenes said.

The gathering will highlight issues including prevention, treatment and care. One of the world’s leading voices on the AIDS pandemic in Africa, UN Envoy on HIV/AIDS Stephen Lewis, recently spoke out about the lack of life-saving medicines making it to the continent.

Medications do exist to prevent a mother from passing the deadly disease on to her child at birth, but Lewis says apathetic drug companies and governments are handing these youngsters a death sentence by not offering affordable treatment.

“It’s intolerable,” he said. “It’s such an indictment of the international community and of multilateral agencies, I don’t know how they can hold their heads up. It isn’t as though we haven’t known about this for a very long time.”