The Living Partnership is proud to announce the opening of Living 2008: The Positive Leadership Summit, which opens today, 31st July at the Fiesta Americana Reforma Hotel, Mexico City.

Convened immediately before the 17th International AIDS Conference, Living 2008: The Positive Leadership Summit will bring together nearly 400 participants living with HIV from 88 countries and is the largest gathering of positive people since the XI International PLHIV Conference, convened in Kampala, Uganda in 2003.

“Since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, people living with HIV have played a central role in almost every major achievement that has been made”
Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS, Opening Plenary speaker.

Throughout the two day event, drawing from personal experience of living with HIV, delegates will utilize their diverse and varied expertise, to debate the following key themes:

• Universal access to HIV treatment, care and prevention programmes
• Criminalization of transmission of HIV
• Sexual and reproductive rights of people living with HIV
• Positive prevention
• Women and most at-risk groups as a major cross-cutting issue

In addition to creating a revitalized global advocacy agenda and action plan for those living with HIV, the outcomes of Living 2008: The Positive Leadership Summit discussions will form an important component of AIDS 2008. 

Summit participants will bring their unique and current perspectives to lead and inform many of the sessions within the conference and move forward the agenda on these themes.

“People living with HIV are key to reversing the epidemic. The  systematic collection and analysis of the experiences of people living with HIV that formed part of the preparation process for the summit are proof that people living with HIV can contribute to a significant and important body of knowledge to inform policy and programming at national, regional and global levels.”
Dr. Kevin Moody, International Coordinator / CEO, Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+).

The Living 2008 Partnership is a consortium of organizations committed to strengthening the movement of PLHIV and their communities:

• the Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+)
• International Community of Women Living with HIV (ICW)
• International Council of AIDS Service Organizations (ICASO)
• International HIV/AIDS Alliance
• International AIDS Society (IAS)
• International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)
• International Planned Parenthood Federation(IPPF)
• the Mexican network of PLHIV
• Sidaction
• Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) 
• the World Health Organization (WHO)

Living 2008 is supported by AIDS2008, Canadian International Development Agency, Ford Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline’s Positive Action programme, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Irish Aid, Norwegian Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sidaction, Tibotec, UNAIDS, and the World Health Organization.

The summit website will provide updated information on the event http://www.living2008.org

Contact: Manuel da Quinta
daquintam@unaids.org
tel. +52 55 1392 5869