School of Medicine to hold AIDS conference at IUPUI

The numbers are staggering.\nMore than 3 million people died from Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome in 2003 and 5 million were infected by the virus worldwide, according to www.cnn.com. Almost 38 million people worldwide carry the virus, some unknowingly. \nWith no end to AIDS/HIV in sight and the numbers of infected increasing each year, IU has decided to combat the virus with education.\nThe IU School of Medicine will sponsor a conference Sunday at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown hotel to discuss what is and isn't working in fighting AIDS/HIV.\n"This conference will allow people on the ground and those at a policy-making level to have a thoughtful discourse on what is working and what is not," said Craig Brater, dean of the IU School of Medicine and the mastermind behind the idea of the conference. "Hopefully that learning can then result in the next stage of addressing this \npandemic so that we do an even better job."\nThe conference speakers include a wide range of those knowledgeable on AIDS/HIV issues including Ambassador Randall Tobias, U.S. Global HIV/AIDS coordinator; James Morris, executive director of the U.N. World Food Programme and Debrework Zewdie, director of the Global HIV/AIDS Program, The World Bank.\n"The potential to learn from one another is enormous," Brater said.\nAllen Anderson, IU visiting associate professor of public health, said he plans on attending the conference. Many of the issues being addressed at the conference deal with issues Anderson discusses in his SPEA special topics course "International Disease."\n"So many diseases know no boundaries," Anderson said, "It's not just developing countries anymore."\nAnderson said his course focuses on health management and has students work to try and solve the problems policy makers face, called a system planning exercise.\n"In this exercise we had to develop a health system within a certain budget from an entire developing country," said sophomore Laura Holmes, a student in Anderson's class. "I've never done anything like that before and I really enjoyed it."\nAnderson, who has worked in China for the last 15 years, studies HIV behavior in the country. While he said the current number of those infected with HIV in China doesn't compare to many of the heavily infected African countries, there is the possibly of a large increase in a short period of time.\n"The sheer numbers (compared to African countries) are not there by far," Anderson said. "The problem is in China you will see an absolute explosion, from 1.5 million to projected 10 to 15 million through projections and behavioral trends."\nExplosive numbers, like China's, are exactly what the conference is designed to fight.\n"My personal interests are humanitarian." Brater said. "I believe that all physicians have a social responsibility. Therein, it is our mandate to help where help is needed."\n-- Contact senior writer Kathleen Quilligan at kquillig@indiana.edu.