HIV & AIDS-A Deep Human Concern

2009 ADDRESS
MAKING UNIVERSAL ACCESS
FOR HIV PREVENTION
HAPPEN FOR WOMEN
The 2009 Professor Father Michael Kelly Lecture on HIV and AIDS took place at the Royal
College of Surgeons in Ireland, as part of an event which centered on the work of the International
AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) 1 . Then Minister of State for Overseas Development, Peter Power,
T.D., gave the opening address to mark World AIDS Day. Father Michael was unable to attend
that year, and instead delivered his address via video from Zambia, introducing guest speaker
Dr. Seth Berkley, founder of the IAVI. Please visit www.fathermichaelkellyzambia.org to view
Father Michael’s address, and read the full transcript of Minister Power’s speech, as well as view
a presentation by Dr. Berkley on strategic advancements in HIV vaccine development.
Michael J. Kelly, S.J.,
Lusaka, Zambia, November 2009
“Chair, Ladies, and Gentlemen, it gives me
great pleasure to speak to you from Lusaka
today, welcoming you to this year’s annual
World AIDS Day lecture. I really regret that
I cannot be with you this year, but commitments
here in Lusaka make this impossible.
By the time you hear this, I will have spent
much of the morning on a chat-back radio
programme dealing mostly, I expect, with
what we can do to prevent the further transmission
of HIV.
This is a very lively two-hour programme that
receives almost non-stop phone-ins and text
messages from a wide audience in many
parts of English-speaking Africa. Then, at
the very time this lecture is starting in Dublin,
I will be telling a German Aid Agency
audience in Lusaka about the way the AIDS
epidemic is impacting on women and girls,
and stressing that the surest way to bring
down the number of new HIV infections is to
end the subordination of women.
Two weeks ago it was really great to hear a national
HIV prevention convention in Zambia
agree on establishing long-term programmes
to end the second-class status of women
throughout our society. If we had enough action
on that, we would stop much HIV.
Then, later this evening, I hope to participate
in the candlelight memorial service at
the Anglican cathedral to remember the living
and the dead who have been infected or
affected by HIV, and to renew our commitment
to moving towards an AIDS-free world.
An AIDS-free world, yes, that’s what we really
want to see, and one of the best ways
towards this lies in the development and use
of an AIDS vaccine.
1 Global not-for-profit public-private partnership which works to accelerate development of vaccines against HIV.
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