Press Release – Canada’s AIDS researchers to meet in Saskatchewan
2009-11-30The Canadian Association for HIV Research (CAHR) has announced that it will bring more than 600 of Canada’s top HIV scientists to Saskatoon next May, to focus their efforts on the rising rates of new infections in that part of the country and to help forge renewed commitments to battle HIV/AIDS Nationally. The annual CAHR Conference continues to be Canada’s premier HIV/AIDS research conference. The 2010 event, being held from May 13 to 16, will feature a number of world renowned speakers, including Dr. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, co-discoverer of the AIDS virus and recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine. The theme, “New challenges, new commitments” will help put into perspective the current status of the AIDS epidemic in Canada.
“The funding for the conference is coming mainly from Canada’s pharmaceutical companies in the form of unrestricted grants,” reported Dr. Brian Conway, who is co-Chair of the Conference. “These grants are critical, in that they allow us to provide scholarships and other travel support to young scientists and community leaders from all across the country.
“The pharmaceutical manufacturers have been a very important partner in the battle against HIV/AIDS,” Conway added. “After the discovery of the virus, the next biggest success story in HIV/AIDS has been the tremendous advances made in antiretroviral treatment. These advances that have transformed AIDS from a universally fatal disease into one we can hope to manage for the lifetime of the individual.” The big breakthrough has been in the use of several drugs in combination – a strategy that attacks the virus in different ways, thus overwhelming it and keeping it from multiplying and mutating. “Compared to the length of time it has taken medical science to develop treatments in other diseases,” He explained, “the advances we have seen in HIV therapy during the past 13 years have been nothing short of incredible.”
As events are held across Canada and around the world to mark World AIDS Day, the main focus will be on the challenges that still need to be addressed. These challenges are many, given that more than 60,000 Canadians and 33 million people worldwide are living with HIV. “It is important to maintain our commitment to battling this huge pandemic,” Dr. Conway concluded. “But it is important also to celebrate our achievements over the past 13 years. In addition to these tremendous biomedical achievements, we have also seen remarkable progress in the behavioural, environmental and societal responses to HIV/AIDS, and CAHR is proud to be meeting in Saskatoon next spring not only to identify the challenges, but also to make the commitments that will be needed to address those challenges as a multidisciplinary research community.”
Contacts:
Dr. Brian Conway, co-Chair
CAHR-2010 Conference Organizing Committee
Vancouver, BC
bconway@interchange.ubc.ca
Dr. Kurt Williams, co-Chair
CAHR-2010 Conference Organizing Committee
Saskatoon, SK
kurt.williams@saskatoonhealthregion.ca
Canadian Association for HIV Research
604-687-6617
info@cahr2010.ca