Plans for major AIDS conference discussed in London

From Neville de Silva in London

The London-based Commonwealth Foundation has agreed to help Sri Lanka when it hosts the International Conference on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP), one of the largest global gatherings on the deadly pandemic, in Colombo next August.

This follows a meeting that Minister of Healthcare and Nutrition Nimal Siripala de Silva had with officials of the Commonwealth Foundation in London on Friday to discuss plans for the conference. The first of these Asian-Pacific conferences was held in Canberra, Australia in 1990.

Minister de Silva met with Dr Mark Collins, Director of the Commonwealth Foundation and Ms Anisha Rajapakse, the Foundation’s Sustainable Development Programme Manager, to identify opportunities for collaboration.

The minister expressed his wish that the conference, which will have as its theme “Waves of Change, Waves of Hope,” be seen both as an opportunity for dialogue and as a forum for the development of innovative approaches to the pandemic that is now spreading in Asia.