Head of UNAIDS Rails Against Homophobia

The XVII International AIDS Conference is as much about the myriad of events, protests and meetings that occur outside of the conference center as it is about the conference itself. These are excerpts from a speech given by UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot at a pre-conference event called "The Invisible Men: Gay Men and Other MSM [Men Who Have Sex With Men] in the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic." The meeting was sponsored by the Global Forum on MSM & HIV.
It's good to be back, and good to see that the forum that was launched in Toronto two years ago is alive and expanding. I'm really proud that we are among your partners, as my nametag says.

The last two years have seen a mix of real progress and also of some major drawbacks and regression in our struggle. Progress, surely, in terms of access to treatment in many countries, and also in terms of reaching out to populations of men who have sex with men, or gay populations, as our UNAIDS report showed -- although the report, in a sense, gives a bit of an overoptimistic view of what actually is happening on the ground. Because when we say that there is now [about] 50 percent of coverage, with prevention services and activities for men who have sex with men, that's based on the information that comes from that countries that report. You can only think about the countries that do not report, and I should say here, it's often high-income countries that do not report.

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