Aspen hosts World Aids Conference delegation

An Aspen Holdings initiative

The International AIDS Conference (IAS) is the leading HIV conference held globally attracting some 25 000 delegates, including scientists, researchers, clinicians, civil society and other stakeholders.

The 2016 conference was held in Durban, also the site of our head office. We participated in a number of conference sessions, the most notable being a parallel session hosted at Aspen Place for a high-level dialogue on the latest ARV research and the development of future ARV fixed dose combinations required for the continent.

Delegates at the meeting included former African President Joacqim Chisano (Mozambique), Kgalema Motlanthe (South Africa), Joyce Banda (Malawi) and Hifikepunye Pohamba (Namibia). The relevance of these former Presidents is that they all championed and pioneered ARV programmes in their countries, which were some of the most affected globally by HIV.

Also in attendance at the Aspen session were some of the country and world’s leading HIV and infectious disease clinicians, including Professor Francois Venter, President of the HIV Clinicians Society of South Africa, Dr Francesca Conradie, Professor Lucille Blumberg, Deputy Director of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) and Dr Anban Pillay, official responsible for the South African Public ARV programme, which is the world’s largest public ARV programme.

Aspen’s Stephen Saad, Lorraine Hill and Stavros Nicolaou made presentations to the delegates on further ARV Fixed Dose Combination pipelines.