The penetrating noise of my wake up call at 6.30 rang in my ears on Wednesday morning to get me up ready for another day at the International AIDS Conference. The slow start in the morning was followed by the rush of adrenaline as I sprinted down the path to get to a session to hear the speaker Dr. Ruth Nduati.
Dr. Nduati worked in Sub-Saharan Africa with children and did research on HIV and AIDS in children. Her work was interesting and the statistics were ones that could really go somewhere. A child's chance of survival is doubled if the child’s mother stays alive. That one piece of information told me that thousands if not millions of children’s lives can be saved.
That session was over soon enough and we all met up in the late morning to see what the plan was. When we did figure out something it wasn’t a plan designed with military precision but it would keep us on the productive side of things.
Irish President
First of all I went to a press conference which had Mary Robinson, the former Irish president and current human rights campaigner, talking about young people and the stigma attached to HIV and AIDS. She has been one of the best speakers at the conference so far because she does say it as it is. She said what was wrong and what needed to be done and that was it.
After a quick breather and a caffeine fuelled drink, Emmet Barr, from Derry, and I went to the Global Village to get some interviews with young people and I think it would be right to say that none of them were fully satisfied with the voice they were being given at this conference. Yes young people did have a voice but they were not being listened to and when it came to the major issues they were at the bottom of the agenda. The interviews we did with them were some of the best we have got so far.
Refreshing Change
For me lunch was a minor event, a simple heartless and cholesterol filled McDonald’s and then back to work. The rest of the afternoon was based around a meeting of Irish delegates which involved Mary Robinson (again) and Fr. Michael Kelly among others, the issue was Stigma and Discrimination. I found this session a refreshing change from the loud and complicated technical sessions. The subject was one of massive relevance to both the developed and less developed world and the speakers were good and articulate and kept it simple.
We finished the day with a fantastic interview with Frika Chia Iskandar from Indonesia - a young woman living with AIDS. The interview we had with her was by far the best one we did with anyone and the answers were the ones that we really could imagine publishing, now the hope is that I don’t lose the recording on the way home to Ireland.
About this article
This article was written by Ciaran McFarlane, 16, who was one of three Headliners reporters in attendance at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada. The article was published on BBC Blast.
