The 2014 International AIDS Conference slated to commence on the 20th of July has been thrown into a mourning state as a result of death of over 100 delegates and key researchers including a one-time president of the International AIDS Society in a plane crash. Their plane bound for Melbourne, the venue of the conference crashed in Ukraine.
According to businessweek website, "A Dutch scientist and a World Health Organization spokesman heading to an AIDS meeting in Melbourne were among 298 Malaysia Airlines passengers and crew
killed on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur yesterday. Many passengers on board Flight 17, which crashed over Ukraine, were en route to the 20th International AIDS Conference, Michel
Sidibe, executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on AIDS said on his Twitter page.
There were 108 AIDS meeting delegates on the flight, the Australian newspaper reported today, without citing anyone. "The International AIDS Society today expresses its sincere sadness," it said in a statement on the meeting's website. "At this incredibly sad and sensitive time, the IAS stands with our international family and sends condolences to the loved ones of those who have been lost to this tragedy."
Among those confirmed killed were Glenn Thomas, a Geneva-based spokesman for the WHO, said Rachel Baggaley, coordinator of the UN agency's HIV prevention program, who arrived in Melbourne earlier today. "We are in shock," Baggaley said over the telephone. "It's casting a shadow over the whole thing."
Joep Lange, head of global health at the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam, was also on board the flight, the UK's Daily Mail newspaper reported on its website. Lange was one of several European researchers on the flight and heading to the Melbourne conference, the report said.
Flight 17 crashed about 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the Russian border in the main battleground of Ukraine's civil war.
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