Growing Student Global AIDS Campaign Holds Conference at Indiana University
Student Global AIDS Campaign, a grassroots effort that has "spread like a field fire" among students since its founding last year, held a Midwest conference this past weekend at Indiana University in Bloomington, the Hoosier Times reports. The conference drew more than 50 student activists from six different educational institutions (Horn, Hoosier Times, 2/24). The conference's goal was to bring attention to the HIV/AIDS crisis and mobilize students to pressure governments and drug companies to make AIDS drugs in developing nations more affordable, to forgive developing nations' debt so they can devote more money to fighting HIV/AIDS and to increase the United States' contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Education is necessary to motivate people about HIV/AIDS in Africa or Asia, Will Prichard, a junior at Harvard University and national media spokesperson for the campaign, said, adding that the U.S. government and the U.S. population cannot continue to ignore the facts about HIV/AIDS and the utility of education and prevention strategies (Meunier, Herald-Times, 2/22). The organization, founded at Harvard University, is now a "growing" network of more than 200 high schools and universities committed to fighting HIV/AIDS (Hoosier Times, 2/24)
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