UNAIDS head has high hopes for Sydney

UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe told community leaders and health organisations that Australia would become a beacon of hope if it could stop all new HIV infections in Sydney by 2015 at a reception at Slide nightclub on Friday.

“I read that in your beautiful city you have almost 360 new infections every year — which means one new infection every day,” Sidibe said.

“What I want is that the city of Sydney will have zero new infections by 2015 and I want you to take that as your new challenge, your new motto and your new goal. If we can make it zero that will demonstrate that we have a city free of new HIV infections and that it’s possible.”

Introducing Sidibe, AFAO head and co-chair of the Global Fund on MSM and HIV Don Baxter, said Sidibe’s appointment represented a series of firsts.

“[He’s] the first African person appointed to that role, the first non-doctor, and in that time Michel has really re-energised UNAIDS in a number of ways,” Baxter said.

“He’s placed the HIV response very firmly in a human rights framework — critically important for the most at risk populations around the world — and he’s provided a much clearer direction to UNAIDS and the co-sponsors.”

Baxter said Sidibe had been particularly effective in providing global leadership on the rights of men who have sex with men (MSM).

“He’s played a global role in forcefully promoting the priority of MSM,” he said.

“He has persuaded his boss, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, to do the same, often directly to heads of state — that’s the first time a UN Secretary General has done that.”

Baxter said Sidibe had also been instrumental in dealing with leaders of “recalcitrant states”, particularly in Malawi where two men were put on trial for marrying each other, and in Uganda where a bill has been drafted imposing the death penalty for HIV positive MSMs.

“Michel has put that on the agenda and he keeps putting it on the agenda in a wide range of forums and in very constructive ways,” Baxter said.

Sidibe said he had no regrets about prioritising the most at risk groups in the global HIV effort, despite the reaction from family in his home country of Mali where homosexuality is not illegal but is frowned upon.

“When I was appointed I took the decision to have my priorities right,” he said. “My priority was fighting for the most at risk populations — men who have sex with men, transgenders, and also drug users and sex workers.

“One day my mum, who is 87, was watching me on TV talking about men who have sex with men and their rights. She asked me ‘Are you a homosexual now?’ I told her ‘Not yet’.