German AIDS Society and self-help organisations from Germany, Austria and Switzerland adopt "Vienna Principles". They regulate participation in the German-Austrian AIDS Congress 2011 in Hanover.
People with HIV/AIDS have a say at congresses on the subject. More precisely: the dialogue with scientists should take place on an equal footing. After all, HIV-positive people are experts in their own field. Their interests are inevitably negotiated at such congresses - or not.
Self-help organisations and activists have long campaigned for appropriate community participation. Before the last Swiss-Austrian-German AIDS Congress (SÖDAK), there was a scandal: the community board stopped its work because it felt that the interests of self-help organisations had not been sufficiently taken into account in the planning. Shortly afterwards, Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe and AIDS-Hilfe NRW also withdrew from the SÖDAK.
At the German-Austrian AIDS Congress 2011 in Hanover, everything should now be better: Yesterday, the German AIDS Society - one of the organisers of the congress - and several self-help organisations signed the "Vienna Principles" at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna.
The joint declaration is intended to ensure that the congress remains focussed on the practice of living with HIV and regulates the participation of certain communities. In addition to people living with HIV, this also includes groups that are particularly affected by HIV (e.g. gays, drug users and migrants from countries particularly affected by HIV) or are involved in the areas of self-help and prevention (AIDS service organisations, social scientists).
The involvement of these groups in congress committees is also regulated in the joint declaration.
The Vienna Principles were signed by representatives of the German AIDS Society, Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe, the Swiss organisation LHIVE and the Austrian organisation Positiver Dialog. The draft of the paper had been under public discussion since May.
(howi)
Press release by Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe on aidshilfe.de
