AIDS post-HIV : beat of a different drummer - AltHeal

A holistic approach: An intern a t i o n a l
conference on the fight against AIDS in
Africa
Rosalind Harrison was a co-organiser of the recent conference in
Nkozi, Uganda. Here she reflects on some aspects of this
significant event.
Rosalind Harrison is an ophthalmologist in
Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. She
was born in Brisbane, Australia and studied
medicine at the University of Queensland and
the London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine.
She is co-author of the book AIDS, Racism and
Africa and addressed the UN Human Rights
Commission on AIDS in Africa in 1997.
T h e re have been not one but two intern a t i o n a l
AIDS conferences in Africa this year. The first, in
Durban in July, was sponsored by intern a t i o n a l
pharmaceutical companies to the tune of millions
of dollars and was attended by 12,000
delegates. The second conference was a much
less lavish affair. It took place in late August at a
small rural university at Nkozi, Uganda, in
beautiful countryside on the shores of Lake
Victoria. There was no sponsorship; the forty
delegates paid all their own expenses and
stayed in student accommodation. The purpose
of the conference was to bring together academics,
health workers and activists from different
continents and disciplines to consider AIDS in
Africa from a broad perspective. From Uganda,
South Africa, the United States, the United
Kingdom, Kenya and Nigeria there were professors
of anthropological history, primary care and
family medicine, and the political science of
human nutrition. There were lecturers in political
e c o n o m y, primary health care, ethics, and
s o c i o l o g y, health care professionals fro m
Uganda, Nigeria and the United Kingdom. And
t h e re were AIDS activists from Africa and the
United Kingdom who had come to question the
central tenets of AIDS science after their
personal lives, families and communities
had been affected by HIV
diagnoses.
It would seem that no meeting of
those who question any aspect of
AIDS science is too small to escape
the attention of the all pervasive AIDS
establishment. Although re p re s e n t a-
tives of the Ugandan Govern m e n t
and the Ugandan AIDS Commission
had been invited to open and attend
the conference, pressure was applied
to cancel the conference at the last
minute. Fortunately the rights to fre e
speech and academic freedom were
not breached. Instead a compromise
of change of title of the confere n c e
from "Making sense: An international
c o n f e rence on alternative views on
the origins and causes of AIDS in Africa" to "A
holistic approach: An international conference on
the fight against AIDS in Africa" was agreed and
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CONTINUUM vol 6, no 1/2