I don’t know about you but I haven’t been to a plenary talk in the last two days that grabbed my attention and left me excited – with one exception.

Mostly they have been one of two kinds: extremely professional but unexciting scientific stuff (vaccines that just may be available ten years from now, to those who can afford them) or sociological interpretations that range from skilled rhetoric to long-winded talks. And through these sessions we mostly get to see either blocks of text or squiggly graphs.

What´s missing is something that anchors me in the anguish of this horrible pandemic.

Then there´s Kaisa Malinowska-Sempruch. As anyone who saw Tuesday’s plenary knows, she is the Director of International Harm Reduction Development. At the end of her presentation, “From Concern to Action: Harm Reduction as the Key to HIV Prevention and Treatment Efforts in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union,” my friend and I found the hair on our arms standing on end.

Like the hundreds of others who had made the pilgrimage to the plenary Palau, we found ourselves applauding till our palms stung. It was not merely what she had to say, it was how she showed it.

Her words moved me. A vast intimate knowledge of users, pithy analysis of harm-reduction, scathing denunciation of using prisons to deal with drug use, and a passionate commitment to humane and effective responses to one of the tragedies of our times.

But it was her use of gritty images that truly made me it real for me. Gritty black-and-white images of police searches in Russian prisons. Injection drug users sharing needles in dark alleys. Methadone-maintenance staff helping recovering users. Doctors and nurses working the street.

These and other photos fused with her superbly presented data and made me understand. If only all plenaries could be like this.

AIDS 2002 Conference News produced by Health & Development Networks/Key Correspondent Team