World AIDS conference opens on optimistic note

For the next six days, 25,000 participants will take stock of HIV/AIDS infection, research and treatment worldwide.
The conference is slated to address financing of HIV treatments, as well as results of new research.
In 2011, according to the United Nations, 34.2 million people worldwide were living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Now, experts say there is reason for optimism, in recent progress in HIV/AIDS prevention and research aimed at developing a vaccine.
"My colleagues and I are more optimistic to be able to find a vaccine and end the epidemic than we have been in years," Rick King of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) told reporters before the conference.
Experts remain concerned by rising infection numbers in Central Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last week appointed the former director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Michel Kazatchkine, as special envoy for HIV/AIDS to Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Ban's office said new infections in Eastern Europe and Central Asia have risen more than 22 per cent since 2005, and that it was "therefore critical to strengthen ... advocacy efforts" in the region.//DPA