MH17 Crash: Shadow Over Melbourne International AIDS Conference

Melbourne: The death of six international AIDS experts in the MH17 plane crash cast a shadow over the opening session of the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne on July 20.

A one-minute global moment of remembrance was held in honour of the six delegates who died en route to the conference.

Eleven former, present and future presidents of the International AIDS Society came on stage together with representatives from those organisations who lost colleagues: the World Health Organisation, AIDS Fonds, Stop AIDS Now, the Female Health Company, the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development and members of the Dutch HIV research community.

Speakers at the conference remembered their colleagues and their legacy of top level science and global leadership in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe said the world had suffered a great loss of genius and talent. He lost his mentor Joep Lang, former president of the International AIDS Society, in the plane crash.

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"We lost one of the best researchers in the scientific community and also our activists. People who were just helping to give a face to HIV/AIDS. It is a tragedy for us. It is very difficult because Joep was a mentor for me and I think he will always be remembered for his spirit and his legacy," Sidibe said.

Around 12,000 delegates from about 200 countries are participating in the conference. Many tied red ribbons and wrote in condolence books at the venue in memory of the missing delegates. Organisers said the conference would go on because that is what the AIDS researchers would have wanted.

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Michael Kirby, a retired Australian judge and HIV campaigner, said, "Everybody wants to draw from this catastrophe a re-commitment to the obligation to talk about the millions of people who are infected and the urgent obligation to get them on testing, to get them on retroviral drugs, and to remove the impediments of law that make that difficult."

Close to the conference venue, a candlelight vigil was organised by Australians of Ukrainian heritage touched by the shock and sadness of the death of peaceful travellers. As many as 28 of the 298 victims of the MH17 plane crash were Australians.

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Eight other victims were permanent residents of Australia. The death of six AIDS specialists is a symbol of the global nature of a senseless tragedy that has touched so many lives in so many different corners of the world.