World HIV/AIDS community decimated

A number of delegates headed to a HIV conference in Melbourne have been killed on flight MH17.

The 20th International AIDS Conference will happen in Melbourne. Source: Getty Images

Nic Holas is a writer focusing on living with HIV and a delegate to the International AIDS Conference in Melbourne. Here, he writes on the impact of the MH17 tragedy and the importance of the Melbourne conference.

TODAY, we awoke to terrible news of the destruction of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

Beyond the already devastating tragedy of 298 civilian lives lost, we now estimate that over 100 delegates to the 2014 AIDS conference were on board, including the former President of the International AIDS Society, Joep Lange.

MORE: MH17 an 'unspeakable crime'

Many of you may not have realised that the 20th International AIDS Conference was about to take over Melbourne. From scientists to sex workers, it's the single largest gathering (some 15,000 people) of HIV researchers, activists, community workers and people living with HIV the region has seen.

Joep Lange was one of the passengers on MH17. Source: Supplied

This might come as a surprise to those who think that AIDS is not really a big deal anymore. Here in Australia, AIDS is perceived as something that affected us in the 1980s before going off the radar, but it used to be the drum that gay men in Australia beat at any opportunity.

Nowadays, with HIV taking up less of the spotlight, the community is more focused on civil issues like marriage equality. If the people most affected by it aren't too concerned, why should you be?

MORE: Australia grieves as MH17 victims identified

The reality is AIDS has never left us, and HIV infections have been on the rise for the last decade. While we're very fortunate to have all but eliminated AIDS-related deaths in Australia (we don't even publish the annual amount, that's how low it is), globally, AIDS-related illnesses kill around 1.6 million people per year. That's roughly the population of Perth, killed every year. The most tragic part is that those deaths can be prevented.

Workers put on some finishing touches ahead of the conference in Melbourne. Source: News Corp Australia

Meanwhile, there are around 1,200 new HIV infections in Australia each year and some 26,000 people living with the disease. So how come we're not worried about AIDS anymore?

What you might not know is that in 1996, everything changed. Treatments for HIV vastly improved, and living with the disease went from enduring chemotherapy-like side effects to, eventually, hardly any side effects at all. These days, most people living with HIV take 1-3 pills per day, and the science has advanced to the point where the virus becomes suppressed to undetectable levels — that means HIV won't progress to AIDS, and is far less likely to be passed on to another person.

Treatments changed the face of AIDS and HIV around the world, but it wasn't the miracle cure story we expected, or the one we're used to from Hollywood stories about epidemics. Instead, after 1996, the story became more nuanced and complex. The black and white of a positive HIV diagnosis being a death sentence was over, and in its place came a very complex narrative that calls for regular testing, a variety of prevention methods, and adherence and access to daily treatments.

The conference will take place at the Melbourne Exhibition and Conference Centre. Source: News Corp Australia

That story is even more complex in parts of the world where cultural beliefs, stigma and a lack of funding and education prevent people — those living with HIV and at risk of contracting it — from accessing services. Around the world, 36 million people are infected with HIV.

Perhaps the most sobering part of that statistic is that 25 million of the people living with HIV are in Sub-Saharan Africa. For those who believe this is a disease only affecting "gays, junkies and hookers" (AKA "people who should know better"), it might surprise you to know a significant proportion of those 25 million people are women and children, and they're dying unnecessary deaths because we can't get lifesaving treatments to them.

This is the great tragedy of AIDS in 2014: We have a way to stop the deaths, and it's not happening quickly enough. AIDS is an international humanitarian problem, and as a privileged nation, we have a responsibility to all people affected by it. However, each nation struggles with the question of how to address its most at-risk groups.

The conference runs from July 20-25. Source: News Corp Australia

Here in Australia, 80% of people living with HIV are gay men, which is thanks to early efforts to contain the disease, particularly through the empowerment of that community, along with the sex worker and injecting drug user communities (we enjoy some of the world's lowest rates of HIV among those two communities).

Elsewhere in the world it's a different story, and neighbouring nations can see wildly different issues. In Poland, injecting drug users drive the epidemic, whereas next door in Germany, it's men who have sex with men, and in Ukraine, its sex workers.

None of these communities should be blamed for the high prevalence of HIV. Rather, it is the responsibility of the respective governments (and wider communities) to ask which factors of their particular cultures are driving people to contract HIV. How is each culture turning its back on people?

Premier Denis Napthine confirms nine Victorians were aboard the doomed flight MH17, amongst many heading to the 2014 AIDS conference. Sky News

For those of us who think "that's all well and good, but that's their problem", bear in mind that HIV has no respect for geopolitical borders, no matter how "sovereign" we here in Australia may consider them to be. We're part of a global transient community. HIV is contracted at home, on holiday or on business trips, and always by mistake. It's a very human kind of disease, mainly spread by an act of love, so our approach to it must be human, too.

That human approach is certainly felt today, as I stand alongside my friends and mentors who have lost friends, colleagues and some of the heroes of this movement. Today, we mourn the loss of 108 lives dedicated to the fight against AIDS and HIV.

The International AIDS Conference in Melbourne is a timely reminder that this problem is still here, and we have a part to play. As a relative newcomer to this community, I am so privileged to extend the work of those who went before me.

Usually, that refers to those who have been claimed by AIDS, but today we're faced with a different kind of tragedy.

Nic Holas is a writer focusing on living with HIV and the contemporary gay experience, and has been published in Hello Mr., Junkee, SX, Star Observer, Cosmopolitan, and more. Nic is co-founder of The Institute of Many (TIM), a social umbrella for HIV positive people, and an ENUF Ambassador. Tweet him at @nicheholas.

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