SYDNEY, Australia – Fifty-one journalists from 26 countries have been granted fellowships by the National Press Foundation in Washington, United States to attend a four-day training session here in Australia, in preparation for the fourth International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention.

The conference, which is slated to run from July 22 to 25, will have more than 5,000 delegates, including some of the world’s leading HIV/AIDS researchers and medical professionals from 130 countries around the world.

About 350 media professionals have also registered to cover the three- day event.

Dr David Cooper, leading HIV clinician and past president of the IAS, the world’s leading independent association of HIV/AIDS professionals and principal organiser of the conference, said the event will cover basic science, clinical science and prevention science as it relates to the disease.

Cooper said conference organisers have received a record number of abstracts for presentation, with 3,000 already approved.

Jamaica will be among the countries approved for an abstract presentation, and will also mount posters at the conference.

Dr Tracy Evans, a paediatrician from the Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay, the western Jamaica city, told the Observer that she will be exhibiting a poster presentation on children with HIV in St James.

Cooper said the conference will cover basic research as well as the clinical outcomes. “It will cover things such as looking on the virus on the immune system in the laboratory and in test tubes and try to work out why the virus is doing what it is doing to the cells of the body,” he said.

“Then there are the clinical scientists who look at people with HIV and the clinical outcomes and also there is the group of prevention scientists that look at the scientific aspects of the prevention of HIV and how to get more out of it,” added Evans.

At the same time, Bob Meyers, president of the National Press Foundation, told the Observer that the intended purpose for having the ‘Journalist 2 Journalist’ HIV training prior to the start of the conference is to allow for a preview of the very scientific and medical sessions to be encountered at the conference.

“This is to help journalists from around the world, especially from developing countries, prepare to cover the IAS conference and so a lot of what we are doing will be previewing the very scientific and medical sessions to be encountered next week,” he said.

Topics to be covered during the conference will include the HIV vaccine research, new antiretrovirals (ARVs) coming on stream for both adults and children, and microbicide, a biomedical preventative method currently on trial to protect women against sexually transmitted infection, including HIV.

The gel-like substance when inserted into the vagina is expected to form a barrier against the HIV virus, allowing women who are unable to negotiate condom use with their partners an opportunity to protect themselves. The trial which started four years ago could be ready for mass usage as early as 2008.