What Can We Expect From the 1993 International Conference on AIDS?

Abstract

From June 6 through 11, 1993, more than 10000 people will attend the Ninth International Conference on AIDS, held this year in Berlin, Germany. This enormous meeting, ninth of an annual series, is unique among international health gatherings. Not only has the organization and "culture" of successive meetings evolved considerably, but each year's international AIDS conference has strongly influenced our view of the pandemic. The first two meetings, in Atlanta, Ga (1985), and Paris, France (1986), were organized as classic medical gatherings, with the traditional array of large plenary lectures and many smaller, abstract-driven sessions. Yet, they also firmly established the global scope of the epidemic, which was fundamental for launching of the World Health Organization's global AIDS strategy in 1986. The next year, in Washington, DC, politics forcefully (and permanently) entered the conference, as demonstrations outside and inside the meeting rooms expressed growing frustration among AIDS activists with the