The Prime Minister of St. Maarten the Honorable Sarah Wescot Williams will be departing for the United States on Friday to head the eleven member St. Maarten Delegation to the XIX International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012) held in Washington DC from the 22nd to the 27th of July. During the conference the Prime Minister will be chairing the session on addressing HIV-Related Stigma and Discrimination with the aim of changing the effects of HIV stigma within local communities. The Prime Minister will also be a featured speaker at the Regional Session: Sustainable Development and HIV - A Caribbean Agenda, also during the AIDS 2012 Conference.
On Tuesday the Prime Minister held a preparatory meeting with the St. Maarten delegates at the AC Wathey Legislative Hall. During the meeting HIV/ AIDS program Manager for St. Maarten Suzette Moses-Burton gave the Prime Minister and the present delegates an outline of the planning and logistics of the conference and what to expect during the sessions.
The Prime Minister will be speaking on the challenges of maintaining the continuation of HIV/ Aids programs in a Parliamentary Democracy and will also be increasing the exposure of the HIV/ Aids program on St. Maarten and researching the advances in the treatment of the epidemic and the new technologies which are available for its control. The St. Maarten delegation will also be giving a Poster Presentation entitled "Safe Secrets" at the conference, which was approved by the organizing committee for Aids 2012 out of thousands of applications to present at the conference.
The International AIDS Conference is the largest international meeting on a single health issue. Every two years 20,000 participants representing all stakeholders in the global response to HIV meet to assess progress and identify future priorities. The AIDS 2012 conference is the single most widely covered HIV event in the world and is organized by the International AIDS Society (IAS) in partnership with a number of international and local partners. The conference theme, "Turning the Tide Together", emphasizes that the HIV epidemic has reached a defining moment and that by acting decisively on recent scientific advances in HIV treatment and biomedical prevention, the hope for a cure and the continuing evidence of the ability to scale-up key interventions in the most-needed settings there is now the potential to end the HIV epidemic.
From the Cabinet of the Prime Minister
