Conf. Announcement: Emerging Frontiers and Challenges in HIV/AIDS Research

[Guest guest]

Conference Announcement

International Conference on " Emerging Frontiers and Challenges in HIV/AIDS

Research " At Mumbai, India: February 5-8, 2011

The number of people living with HIV worldwide has grown to alarming proportions

in recent years with more than 25 million people including adults and newborns

having succumbed to AIDS till date.

AIDS-related illnesses are projected to cause significant premature mortality in

the coming decades. Consistent viral variation, differential immunological

responses in host, viral affinity to different receptors and resistance to

therapies have been recognized as the major impediments in developing effective

therapeutic drugs and preventive tools such as vaccines and microbicides.

In addition to these daunting bottlenecks in the area of fundamental and

clinical research on HIV/AIDS, other issues, which warrant urgent attention are

lack of focused HIV prevention programmes for key populations and integrated

programmes specifically designed for

people living with HIV.

There is pressing need to fill up the research gaps in our knowledge about the

prevention approaches among older adults, serodiscordant couples and

determinants of vulnerability among young people such as intergenerational

partnerships.

The International Conference on " Emerging Frontiers and Challenges in HIV/AIDS

Research " aims to provide an interactive forum to the researchers who have been

engaged in addressing the cutting edge researchable issues such as mode and

mechanism of HIV infection and transmission; resistance to the pathogen as well

as anti-HIV drugs;

disease progression; and development of efficaceous strategies for prevention,

diagnosis and treatment of HIV/AIDS.

Special sessions on the policymaking and advocacy for the programmes on control

and management of HIV/AIDS will be the other highlights of this international

meet.

This meeting is expected to create an excellent convergence of the

perspectives of those with specific interests in fundamental, clinical and

sociobehavioural research on HIV/AIDS.

We earnestly hope that the deliberations during the conference will help in

translating theoretical advances into the clinical practices and contribute

towards deaccelerating the pace of this pandemic.

The basic science sessions will focus on the impact of pathogenic diversity and

host response on transmission and progression of the disease, preclinical

testing of anti HIV drugs, microbicides and vaccines.

The clinical science sessions will cover antiretroviral

therapies resistance to drug therapy, limitations in HIV diagnosis, counseling

and testing of sero-discordent couples and clinical trials of microbicides and

vaccine.

The session on service delivery for prevention and management of HIV/AIDS will

address role of private, NGO and public sectors in HIV service delivery; linked

services of HIV with SRH including contraception and tuberculosis programme; and

operational research.

The session on HIV/AIDS Epidemiology will address HIV incidence including

methods of assay; arriving at HIV estimates; HIV surveillance; impact of STI

control on HIV epidemic and impact of increased access to treatment on

epidemiological trends.

Socio-behavioral science session will address the challenges in reducing the

stigma, male involvement, sexuality and gender, and enhancing the community

involvement in control of HIV/AIDS.

On behalf of the organizers of the committee I am pleased to invite you to

actively participate in the conference and contribute towards defining a more

focused and comprehensive research goal to thwart the pandemic of HIV/AIDS.

Dr A. H. Bandivdekar

Organizing Secretary

Assistant Director (Scientist D)

National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health

(Indian Council of Medical Research)

J. M. Street, Parel, Mumbai 400 012 INDIA

Tel No. 91-22-24192021, 24192138

Fax No. 91-22-24139412

Mobile No. 91-9869027186

Email : batmaram@...

batmaram@...

http://www.nirrh.res.in/announcements/Conference%20%20Announcement1862010.pdf