Dear Friends,

Now officially open, this year’s International Aids conference, AIDS 2014, kicked off , 20^th July, in Melbourne, Australia. This year’s theme is “Stepping up the pace”, and researchers, academics, clinicians, and many more have gathered to discuss the current global state of affairs and progress towards overcoming the ongoing challenge of HIV/AIDS, and to present their latest findings. You can read more about this year’s programme by visiting the AIDS 2014 website, and view the standout items from each day of the conference by clicking here.

The conference has also seen the release of the AIDS 2014 Melbourne Declaration, which emphasises the importance of non-discrimination, as “fundamental to an evidence-based, rights-based and gender transformative response to HIV and effective public health programmes.” You can read more about the Melbourne Declaration, whose ambassadors include Nobel Laureate Françoise Barré Sinoussi, Sir Richard Branson, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and many more. To sign up to the Declaration, please click here to visit the campaign’s Avaaz website.

A number of the IFGH’s members are attending this year’s AIDS 2014, and we hope to hear from them via our social media channels! For those of us who are unable to attend, regular updates can be viewed at the conference’s media centre, and wider commentary on the event can be seen, as well as contributed to, via Twitter using the hashtag:#AIDS2014.

This year’s conference has been of course overshadowed by the recent loss of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, many of whose passengers were travelling to attend AIDS 2014, including Dutch clinical researcher and former President of the International AIDS Society, Professor Joep Lange, and the World Health Organisation’s Glenn Thomas. A minute’s silence was observed, and tributes were paid to the colleagues who were lost in this tragedy, at the conference’s opening session.

With kind regards,

Irish Forum for Global Health