LetsSTOPAIDS. Shamin started LetsStopAIDS when he was 15 years old. The organisation works to educate and raise awareness about HIV as well as supporting people living with HIV.  It has grown from a small group of volunteers to a network of over 400 volunteers working all over the world. 

Shamin first came across NAM at a conference in 2006, and has been using our materials ever since.  He finds NAM's patient booklets really useful – simple and easy to use, an approach that is vital for the youth audiences he works with.  His organisation is also listed in HIV & AIDS Services Worldwide. To find out more about their work and other innovative projects like ‘Spread trees not AIDS’ visit www.LetsStopAIDS.org or email smj@LetsStopAIDS.org

Network of People Living with HIV & AIDS (NAP+) partner of the Global Network of People with HIV & AIDS
NAP+ is a pan-African organisation working out of West, Central, Eastern, Southern Africa and Indian Ocean Island.  They run treatment literacy and advocacy programmes to help prepare community members for starting treatment.  Medical terminologies are complex  – ‘how do you explain viral load to someone who has not even been to school’.  

Michael uses NAM’s patient booklets for example anti-hiv drugs, resistance and adherence in training and finds translations in portuguese and French particularly useful for his projects in Mozambique and Angola.  He observes that without this treatment education people starting treatment often drop out after a few weeks.  To find out more about Michael’s work visit www.rapnap.org or email him at mikeangaga@yahoo.com

Mr Kaveesher is the Program Manager for AIDS Orphan Community Care at Solidarity and Action Against The HIV Infection in India (SAATHII)

SAATHII is a Indian national NGO working from 5 offices over 9 states helping to strengthen frontline organisations working to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India.

Mr Kaveesher has been subscribing to HIV & AIDS Treatment In Practice (HATIP) from NAM for a year and uses interesting and relevant articles and biomedical updates for use in presentations and e-forums to share best practice across India.

SAATHII would like to see increased best practice sharing, locally, nationally and globally, and looks to conferences like IAC and organisations like NAM to help build on this networking.

Kenya Medical Research Institute
As a medical doctor coodinating HIV prevention, care and treatment programmes it is vital Steve stays up to date. He is visiting the conference to learn about how he can improve his strategies, drawing on expertise from around the world.

Sharing and collaborating are key in helping overcome the challenges posed by limited access to treatment and lack of sustainable care for people with HIV in Kenya.

He has come across NAM before this conference and uses www.aidsmap.com as a link to resources and materials that he can adapt. He is keen to work with us and translate some of our patient materials into Swahili.
Stadudans@gmail.com

Ale is a volunteer from Mexico helping at the AIDS 2008 Conference.

She is a social researcher with a particular interest in discrimination. She hopes that by attending IAC she will learn more about the specific stigma and discrimination experienced by people living with HIV. She has found the Global Village at IAC a rich source of information.

She thinks the IAC coming to Mexico is a fantastic opportunity to raise awareness of HIV discrimination.

Edwin, NAM’s HIV Treatment Update editor, is one of the small team of NAM editors who write news and daily round-ups from the conference.  He is also here to present a poster on ‘selective responses to HIV ‘crimes’

‘There is a growing international trend towards the criminalisation of people living with HIV…however the law is not applied equally or fairly even within a single country.’ Edwin monitors the media reports of prosecutions globally and shares the valuable lessons he has learnt through his blog.

Presenting a poster is his opportunity to publicise his blog and emphasise criminalisation as a global issue. 'Looking at the impact of prosecutions on the individuals and the epidemic, it is clear that the criminal justice system is not the best way to deal with HIV transmission'  

Institute of Medical Research in Collaboration with Centre for Disease Control.

Oloo has come to the IAC to present a poster on the challenges involved in recruiting people to take part in clinical trials.   Lack of adequate information about HIV coupled with fear of being tested and knowing one’s status, acts as a barrier for people taking part in clinical trials.  Oloo hopes to take lots of information back from the conference to improve understanding and research in Kenya. He took a CD ROM from the NAM stand which has a booklet on Clinical Trials, as well as a huge range of other treatment resource.

Anh is the project coordinator for HIV & AIDS, Ministry of Health.
They provide information and run community based activities for hard to reach groups, mainly sex workers and injecting drug users. Recruiting volunteers and peer educators from these groups has proved an effective way of communicating important HIV information.  Anh has come to the conference to share his experiences and learn from similar projects in other countries.

Tetyana Deshko works as Head of Team at the International HIV/AIDS Alliance in Ukraine.

Tetyana's colleagues at the Alliance have previously helped NAM to translate NAM's booklets into Russian which are now used throughout many testing centres in the Ukraine.

Tetyana thinks NAM's booklets provide great solutions both in design and content to challenges facing people living with HIV. 

Vinayakan is the national co-ordinator for HIV/AIDS for Plan India. The conference is an opportunity for him to learn more about care and support for people infected and affected by HIV and TB, particularly children.

TB is one of the biggest killers of people with HIV in India. Vinayakan wants to see ealier diagnosis and preventative treatment started earlier. He also feels that community involvement and peer support is key to being able to provide the sustainable care that will prevent people with HIV dieing from TB. 

He took a copy of NAM's 'think TB in people with HIV' with further articles around the challenges of integration of HIV and TB management.

Sylvie is the editor of NAM’s international listings directory – HIV & AIDS Services Worldwide. The directory lists organisations in over 190 countries worldwide.  The agencies listed work with all affected communities and provide a wide range of services including treatment, prevention, testing, counselling, palliative care, support and advocacy. It is also a available as a free fully searchable database.

‘Coming to international conferences is integral to my work. I am continually expanding the directory adding organisations and updating details to make sure this can be used as a global networking tool, supporting collaboration and the sharing of experiences and best practice’.

Is your organisation listed? If you would like your organisation to be included register online.  Every listing gets a free paper copy of the directory posted out annually.

gTt is a community based organisation that produces HIV information and helps improve the quality of people’s lives through advocacy and lobbying.

gTt is sharing the exhibition stand with NAM; working together helps widen the access people have to a huge range of resources in Spanish and English.

‘This is the first International AIDS conference held in Latin America so being here is really important for our organisation – half of our audiences are from this part of the world. This is a unique opportunity for us to get to know our audiences better, what information is needed, what are the gaps, what can we improve'.

Jaume has noticed a change in the Spanish Government’s relationship with HIV – ‘they are finally listening to the HIV community and long-time activists’. The visit of the Spanish Minster of Health to gTt’s and other Spanish community booths at the conference, offers hope of a new commitment to HIV. The Vice-President of Spain also pledged 10 million euros to HIV & AIDS around the world, a sign that hopefully, HIV is moving up the agenda. 

To find out more about gTt visit their website today or email info@gtt-vih.org

Institute of Human Virology of the University of Maryland School of Medicine
Kristen and Kimberley’s organisation provides medical and technical assistance for capacity building in resource limited settings – doctors, nurses, laboratory specialists and educators, mentor in local clinics in 8 different countries. 

Kimberley is based in Zambia and finds the NAM email bulletins invaluable.  She sends a monthly newsletter to 18 of their clinics and hospitals and uses NAM information to support her work.  ‘it is vital to have an in-country focus for materials but if you don’t stay in touch with the wider picture you end up re-inventing the wheel’.  Both of them use HIV & AIDS Treatment in Practice as a ‘nice synopsis’ of the key developments and share this information with their networks.

SENS Positive Association 
was set up by people with HIV for people with HIV. They provide ongoing support in the form of post-test counselling, support groups and information leaflets - helping people understand HIV so they can make decisions and lifestyle changes to help them live with their diagnosis.

An important aspect of their work is translation – ‘there is very little information for people with HIV in Romanian’. They translate materials from other organisations to widen the access people have to vital health information. Working with NAM, they have translated our booklets on adherence and cd4 & viral load. Visit their website to find out more http://www.senspozitiv.ro/. 

If you are interested in translating any of NAM’s materials please let us know, email info@nam.org.uk

Daniel is the Executive Director of the AIDS Community Research Initiative (ACRIA). ACRIA aims to improve health literacy and build the capacity of existing HIV services across the US, through innovative research, community response and treatments information.

Daniel thinks the greatest challenge facing organisations that produce treatments information, such as ACRIA and NAM, is responding to the changing face of the epidemic and ensuring resources and services are appropriate.

People took to the streets on Saturday 2nd August in the 1st International march against stigma, discrimination and homophobia to take place in Latin America.   

Dr Heudra Widjaja works for Family Health International (FHI) on the Aksi Stop AIDS (ASA) project responding to the increasing HIV/AIDS epidemic in Indonesia. Dr Widjaja is particularly involved with care, support and treatment of people living with HIV and says the HIV Treatments Directory from NAM will be extremely useful to help him train doctors and nurses.

Dr Widjaja already uses various other resources from NAM in his work, particularly our patient information booklets and the HIV Reference Manual. Dr Widjaja explains that one of the greatest problems in Indonesia is the rising rate of HIV infection amongst injecting drug users, which is presenting challenges around both prevention and adherence to treatment, and there is a need for more information on this topic.