KAMPALA, Oct 26 (AFP) - Community activists and non-government organisation (NGO) workers representing People Living With HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) from around the world open a conference here on Sunday to find ways patients can access anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs.
"We are breaking the silence about HIV/AIDS and confronting the stigma and discrimination continuing to affect those infected," the five-day conference's organising committee chairman Major Rubaramira Ruranga told AFP Saturday night.
Some 800 delegates from around the world, 250 of them from Uganda, are to attend the 11th PLWHA International Conference, opening later on Sunday at Kampala's resort of Munyonyo, with an address by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
Rubaramira, a Ugandan army officer living with AIDS, said the theme of the conference, jointly organized by the Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS and his National Guidance and Empowerment Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda, is the "Dawn of New Positive Leadership."
"This conference comes at a historic time in the international response to HIV/AIDS, where treatment and care, once only a dream for the majority of HIV-positive people, is slowly becoming a reality for an increasing number of victims," Rubaramira said.
He said the last push for the conference would be for people living with the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome telling the world that the African continent needed access to anti-retroviral drugs.
The conference will also discuss access to clean water and good nutrition as basic needs of all people which, they say, are magnified for people who are HIV-positive.
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