Time to Deliver: Report on the Toronto AIDS Conference

This article summarises and comments on the XVI International AIDS Conference, held in Toronto. According to the author, the conference theme, "Time to Deliver," addressed the need for social change as much as it addressed the need for vaccine development, prevention tools, and improved treatment. "...[T]here was a sobering consensus that drugs and “tools” alone would not address underlying structural barriers to AIDS prevention and treatment that need a much longer-term approach."

Larson reports that social justice is a theme that continued to surface in panel sessions and plenary speeches. Gregg Gonsalves summarised the sentiment: "The social, economic and political policies that create this marginalisation in the first place also push us into the path of oncoming epidemics. Yet, we place our hopes in programs that narrowly construct risk around individual behaviour or in some new technology that will save us."

Larson highlights the controversy over the United States-based "Abstinence, Be faithful, use a Condom (ABC)" programme as an example of "action against evidence," quoting research and informant comments on its lack of success.

Citing that the social and structural context of AIDS work is more difficult than in the past, the article calls for wide-ranging social change including addressing gender equality, overcoming judgment, and providing interventions to marginalised populations.