I was lucky enough to have been able to attend the 8th Singapore AIDS Conference yesterday.
Thanks to the group I'm volunteering with, I was able to get a ticket to the one-day event.
It's my first time to attend an AIDS conference. As I have expected though, it would be a day full of learning.
Fellow volunteer Jane and I agreed to meet up at Scape at a very early 715 to get breakkie before heading to Mandarin Orchard for the event.
The event began a little after 9 when Minister of State for Health Dr. Amy Khor arrived. Afterwards, Action for AIDS President Prof. Roy Chan kickstarted the day with his speech.
The theme of this year's conference was Getting to Zero: Zero New Infections. Zero Stigma. Zero Deaths.
Very ambitious, yes, but everyone is aware of this.
As Prof. Chan said, "Though lofty, zero is the ultimate goal."
Following him were keynote speakers Dr. K. H. Wong who shared about the experiences of Hong Kong and fellow FIlipino Laurindo Garcia who talked about his work in the Philippine setting.
I was so damn proud listening to Laurindo's speech.
Afterwards, the concurrent sessions began. Prior to the start of the conference, I already went through the program to choose which topics I want to listen to. There were quite a number of interesting topics.
I thought I would get sleepy at some point, but I managed to stay awake thanks to the very informative presentations.
To me, one of the highlights of the event was Avin Tan coming out about his HIV status. He's the second Singaporean to public reveal that he's HIV positive. The last one was about 15 years ago. Really proud of him for his courageous act.
My takeaway from the event?
The issues are pretty much the same. Awareness about the disease is needed. Stigma needs to be removed so that more people will take the test. We must be alarmed that some of those who are infected are just in their early teens. We all must aim for zero.
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