Publication date: Jul 27, 2022 • 53 min ago • 7 min read • Join the discussion “After the discovery of the COVID-19 vaccine, we are closer than ever to an effective HIV vaccine and even a path to a cure,” he said Dr. -Pierre Routy, co-chair of the 24th International AIDS Conference. Photo by Allen McInnis /Montreal Gazette

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Say “pandemic” and most people think COVID-19. Yet HIV, which claims a life every minute, remains the deadliest pandemic of our time.

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According to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), an estimated 79 million people are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. There is still no vaccine or cure, although 28 million of the 38 million people living with HIV today receive life-saving antiretroviral therapy that keeps them well by reducing the amount of virus in their bodies and preventing transmission. That means 10 million people aren’t. HIV infections are increasing in many countries and progress against new infections has slowed in others. More than four decades after AIDS was first reported in 1981, “we live in a world where HIV is the forgotten epidemic,” says the program describing the opening session of the world’s largest international meeting on HIV/AIDS, on 24 International AIDS Conference. The five-day meeting begins in Montreal on Friday.

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This first session of AIDS 2022, as the conference is known, will explore “the growing apathy” about HIV and consider “why and how the world must re-engage and follow science” if the virus is to be overcome. AIDS 2022, Montreal’s biggest conference this year, will take a hybrid format: bringing 7,200 people to the Palais des congrès in person—masks required—and another 800 people participating virtually through an interactive platform. COVID-19 meant that the 2020 edition of the biennial conference was entirely virtual. As HIV researchers and scientists scrambled to develop vaccines and treatments for COVID-19, the speed with which they understood the coronavirus was directly related to their research on HIV, said Dr. Marina Klein, a professor in the department of medicine at the University McGill, research. director of the Chronic Viral Disease Service at McGill University Health Center and conference speaker.

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And the HIV research community “will bring back lessons from the work on COVID-19 to the HIV field,” he said. “This may have particular benefits for the development of an HIV vaccine which, until now, despite decades of research, has been elusive.” Human clinical trials began this year for an experimental HIV vaccine developed by Moderna and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. It uses the same mRNA technology as Moderna’s successful COVID-19 vaccine to generate an immune response. “Following the discovery of the vaccine for COVID-19, we are closer than ever to an effective HIV vaccine and even a path to a cure,” said AIDS 2022 co-chair Dr. Jean-Pierre Routy, clinical director of chronic viral disease. Service at the MUHC, Louis Lowenstein Chair in Hematology and Oncology and Senior Scientist at the MUHC Research Institute and Professor of Medicine at McGill. “If it works for one disease, it should work for another.”

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But it’s important to refocus attention on HIV, said Ruthie, who is also co-director of the Immunotherapy and Vaccines Core at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)’s Canadian HIV Trials Network. As resources have been redirected to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, rates of HIV testing and treatment have declined, access to treatment and prevention services has been limited, and health care personnel and community organizations helping those living with HIV are being depleted. , Klein said. , national co-director of the CIHR Canadian HIV Trials Network. Without a concerted effort to scale up interventions, and quickly, “we are very concerned that the progress that has been made will be significantly affected,” he said.

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In 1989, when the international AIDS meeting was in Montreal for the first time, community protesters and activist groups took the stage and disrupted the opening ceremony. This mobilization “started a transformation of the relationship between medicine and society,” said Montreal Pride executive director Simon Gamache. “Patients’ voices could no longer be ignored by scientists.” That meeting sparked “community involvement, people living with HIV as a partner in the fight,” Rooty said, and now the conference is “a true partnership” between science and the community. A day-long pre-conference on Thursday will bring together scientists and people living with HIV at the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal.

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In a prelude to Montreal Pride, which begins on August 1 and coincides with AIDS 2022, the festival will include cultural events such as Rapture, a choreographic work intended as a tribute to people who have died of AIDS. The work “combines memory, pain and resilience and aims to remind us of the remarkable advances of the past decades,” Gamache said. “One of the great lessons from HIV is the importance of community engagement and community participation,” said Dr. Kathryn Hankins, professor of public and population health at McGill, co-chair of Canada’s Immunity Task Force on COVID-19 and conference participant. “It’s not just an add-on to science. It makes science better when there is co-creation of studies and joint oversight of studies.”

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In 2004, two HIV pre-exposure prevention trials in sex workers in Cambodia and Cameroon were closed because of insufficient community participation “and we realized that this would affect all prevention trials,” said Hankins, who was chief scientific adviser of UNAIDS in Geneva. from 2002 to 2012. He called a meeting and invited representatives of ACT UP, an international grassroots political group working to end the AIDS pandemic, and what emerged was the need for community guidelines. Community engagement has spread to other conditions, including breast cancer, “with survivors getting involved and participating in conferences. I think people have understood that community engagement makes science better and assimilation results better,” Hankins said. “We learned that from HIV.”

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Speakers at the AIDS 2022 conference will include Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief of public health. Photo by BLAIR GABLE/Reuters While the COVID-19 pandemic has largely hampered efforts to address HIV, it has also led to innovation, he said. There has been a shift to telemedicine to address HIV and concerns about taking antiretrovirals have been addressed. In a session hosted by Global Affairs Canada, participants will reflect on the international community’s efforts to respond to HIV/AIDS and relevant lessons for combating COVID-19 and future pandemics. Speakers will include Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations. Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer. UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima and Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. The session will include video recordings by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical advisor to US President Joe Biden.

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Programming for AIDS 2022 has been kept flexible to accommodate last-minute additions that reflect current issues, Ruti said. One is a session on public health management of monkeypox, which includes Dr. Geneviève Bergeron of the Montreal Department of Public Health. The monkeypox virus is transmitted through close skin-to-skin contact, and most confirmed cases have been among men who have sex with men. Public health officials announced in June that Montreal was the epicenter of the monkeypox outbreak in North America. By mid-July, nearly 10,000 men in Montreal and their health care providers had received the smallpox vaccine, which is effective against smallpox, and the vaccination campaign was extended to tourists.

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“The good news in Montreal is that the cases have come to an end,” Ruti said. But on Saturday, the WHO, which has received reports of more than 16,000 monkeypox cases in 75 countries, declared monkeypox “a public health emergency of international concern”. A session on the needs of refugees and others with HIV during armed conflicts such as the war in Ukraine was also added to the agenda. It will address, among other things, the difficulty of maintaining the supply of drugs to treat HIV…