This AIDS congress is featuring national and global leaders to deliberate on issues confronting us in the fight against AIDS and HIV-associated co-morbidities and co-infections, including Hepatitis B and hepatitis C, tuberculosis, COVID-19 and other emerging infectious diseases as well.
Conference highlights include scientific sessions with latest research updates on HIV (and HIV-COVID-19) epidemiology, virology, immunology, pathogenesis, strategy for early HIV diagnosis and progress update on 2020 goal of 90:90:90 and future goal of 95:95:95, test and treat strategy, Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP), HIV in women, new-born, children and adolescents, HIV and HIV-TB drug resistance, combination prevention, research updates on HIV prevention technologies such as vaccines, HIV treatment science, non-AIDS defining diseases, HIV-TB, HIV-hepatitis, HIV and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), HIV and cancers, HIV and COVID-19 including post-COVID/ long COVID, TB and COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccines and other emerging infectious diseases, among others.
COVID-19 pandemic has exposed not only the fault-lines of inequitable health responses but also the fragility of health systems in the wake of humanitarian crises or emergency situations.
The conference organisers have called for stronger and well-coordinated integrated health responses to end AIDS, TB, COVID-19 and other infectious and non-communicable diseases, and social determinants of health, said Dr Dilip Mathai, Co-Chair of 13th ASICON and Dean of Apollo Institute of Medical Sciences and Research.
"ASICON is the annual national AIDS conference of the AIDS Society of India. Since the pandemic this is the first in-person ASICON conference. 13th ASICON is a three-days meeting where various aspects of HIV and related opportunistic infections and various therapies for the management of HIV infections and COVID-19, and COVID-19 related complications, newer therapies for COVID-19 will be discussed by various experts from India and abroad" said Dr N Kumarasamy, Scientific Co-Chair 13th ASICON and Director, Infectious Diseases Medical Centre, Voluntary Health Services, Chennai.
"The conference will focus on many thematic areas including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the HIV pandemic and lessons learnt from that for future reference" said Dr Glory Alexander, co-Chair of 13th ASICON.
Dr Vijay Yeldandi, scientific co-chair of 13th ASICON and head of SHARE India, said "Once again AIDS Society of India has put together a stellar program of particular relevance in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic to address all significant developments in HIV policy as well as newer scientific advances to improve the practice of clinical care for people living with HIV we are making steady progress towards eliminating HIV as a public health threat."
13th ASICON presents an important opportunity to learn lessons on what went well and what could have gone better in the past two years of controlling COVID-19, HIV and TB during the pandemic year, and also better understand the similarities of epidemic and endemic diseases and their geographic predisposition. With less than 106 months left to end AIDS (and 46 months left to end TB) in India, it is high time to join forces to accelerate progress towards honouring these public health promises as envisaged in the sustainable development goals.
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