Yahoo – AFP,
Richard Ingham, 19 July 2014
A global AIDS summit was in shock Saturday at the loss of colleagues in the Malaysia Airlines disaster over Ukraine, but spirits were lifted when the number who died was put at six, far fewer than feared.
A global AIDS summit was in shock Saturday at the loss of colleagues in the Malaysia Airlines disaster over Ukraine, but spirits were lifted when the number who died was put at six, far fewer than feared.
Reports on
Friday said as many as 100 passengers on the plane were en route to the 20th
International AIDS Conference in Melbourne when it went down in a rebel-held
part of the country on Thursday, killing all 298 on board.
But
International AIDS Society president Francoise Barre-Sinoussi said just six
attendees were confirmed dead.
"The
number that we have confirmed through our contacts with authorities in
Australia, in Malaysia, and Dutch authorities as well is six people. It may be
a little bit more, but not the numbers that have been announced," she
said.
Those
killed include prominent Dutchman Joep Lange, a pioneer of cheap
anti-retrovirals for the poor who had been involved in HIV research and
treatment since 1983.
Officials
said Pim de Kuijer from STOPAIDSNOW was also on board, along with Lucie van
Mens, director of AIDS Action Europe and her colleague Maria Adriana de
Schutter.
World
Health Organization official Glenn Thomas and Jacqueline van Tongeren from the
Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development also died in the crash.
Flight MH17
from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, which US officials believe was hit by a
surface-to-air missile, was due to connect with another flight to Melbourne.
Despite the
death toll not being as bad as feared, the sense of loss was palpable as
attendees gathered at the Melbourne Convention Centre on the eve of the
high-powered meeting, the largest of its kind in the world.
File photo
of leading AIDS researcher
Joep Lange (AFP Photo/Jean Ayissi)
|
"Our
colleagues were travelling because of their dedication to bringing an end to
AIDS.
"We
will honour their commitment and keep them in our hearts as we begin our
programme on Sunday. This tragedy is probably a good sign to work again
together and to continue as a tribute for our colleagues."
The loss of
Lange was felt particularly hard by Barre-Sinoussi.
"Joep
was not only a great researcher, a great champion of the fight against HIV for
many years, he was also a wonderful human being," she said.
"He
was firmly believing that a cure for HIV was possible, as we all do, and was
one of the first supporters of the idea of integrating social science with the
search for a cure."
Officials
from the PharmAccess Foundation, which Lange launched in 2000 to facilitate
access to treatment for HIV and AIDS patients across Africa, said his death was
"a massive loss".
Clinton:
Victims are 'martyrs'
Some 12,000
participants are due to take part in the conference, including former US
president Bill Clinton, who told CNN that those who died were
"martyrs".
Wreckage
from the crashed Malaysian
airliner is shown near the town of
Shaktarsk, in
rebel-held east Ukraine,
July 17, 2014 (AFP Photo/Dominique
Faget)
|
"Those
people are really, in a way, martyrs to the cause that we are going to
Australia to talk about."
Clinton is
due to give an address in Melbourne on Wednesday.
Held every
two years, the International AIDS Conference is a forum for campaigners to
highlight developments in fighting the disease and discuss financing problems.
It is this
year also expected to channel anger about laws in Africa that stigmatise homosexuality
and in the former Soviet Union that punish intravenous drug users -- a
crackdown now extended to Russian-annexed Crimea.
Some 35
million people live with HIV, although global AIDS-related deaths and new
infections have fallen by more than a third in a decade, raising hopes of
beating the killer disease by 2030.
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