[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Lewis_S_by_NWiebe.jpg” caption=”McMaster’s Social Sciences Scholar-in-Residence, Stephen Lewis Photo credit: Nick Wiebe”]Over 24,000 delegates from 132 countries – researchers, doctors and nurses, human rights advocates, politicians, philanthropists and even celebrities – are gathering in Toronto this week for the XVI International AIDS Conference, the largest in the meeting's 21-year history. The conference, entitled 'Time to Deliver', runs from August 13 to 18, based at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (MTCC), with numerous related events at sites throughout the city's downtown core.

Among those attending the conference, which will cost $20 million to mount and bring $22 million into Toronto tourism coffers, will be such luminaries as Canadian Stephen Lewis, the UN's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa and McMaster University's first Social Sciences Scholar-in-Residence, former U.S. president Bill Clinton, philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates, UNAIDS director Dr. Peter Piot and actors Richard Gere, Sandra Oh and Olympia Dukakis.

Thousands of scientists from around the world will present 4,500 pieces of research plus an as-yet-unknown number of late-breaking papers on everything from the latest efforts to produce an effective vaccine to the results of clinical trials of microbicide gels (for use by women to prevent HIV transmission during sex) to emerging drug-resistance to first-line anti-retroviral drugs that are keeping millions of people infected with HIV alive.

This gathering is considered the largest since the now-biennial meeting was first convened in Atlanta in 1985.

Opening ceremonies were held yesterday at Rogers Centre, including a concert featuring Alicia Keys, the Barenaked Ladies, the Blue Man Group, Our Lady Peace, Amanda Marshall and Chantal Kreviazuk. Besides the 24,000 delegate tickets, 20,000 tickets are available for sale to the general public.

More information is available at www.aids2006.org.