For years, whenever Lucy Chesire, an HIV and tuberculosis activist, traveled to the United States from Kenya to meet with members of Congress, she kept one thing quiet at the airport: her own HIV status.
The United States barred most carriers of the virus from visiting the country, so Chesire, 39, never told immigration officials that she had it, even as she lobbied to overturn the ban during her annual visits here.
Updates on the sessions and speeches taking place throughout the day.
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Two years ago, it was lifted. “For me, it was the biggest news that ever happened,” said Chesire, who this week will join tens of thousands of visitors from around the world — many of them HIV positive — to attend the 19th International AIDS Conference, which starts Sunday at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center and runs for six days.
It is the first time in 22 years that it will be held in the United States; organizers had stopped scheduling it here during the ban.
With more than 21,000 people from 177 countries registered, and thousands more expected to come to town without registering, it is expected to be the largest such gathering since the International AIDS Conference began in 1985. Conference attendees will fill about 6,000 hotel rooms and additional space in hostels, bed and breakfasts, and on the couches of friends and volunteers.
Official speakers include Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Elton John, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Whoopi Goldberg and leading AIDS scientist Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.
Others in town for the conference include Jamar Rogers, an HIV-positive former “American Idol” contestant, who will perform at the convention center Monday, and Timothy Ray Brown, who appears to be the first person to have been cured of the virus, through bone marrow transplants he received for leukemia.
Holding the conference here has particular resonance, activists say, because HIV/AIDS is at epidemic levels in the District. About 2.7 percent of city residents older than 12 were living with HIV or AIDS in 2010, according to the latest annual report, released last month.
“What you see now in the District, the numbers are scary,” said Kareem Murphy, a local lobbyist who is a member of Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, which will serve as a meeting point for conference attendees.
“The city feels like it’s asleep to the reality of the existence and prevalence of HIV/AIDS,” Murphy said, adding that many of the city’s hardest-hit populations are in areas far from the center of power.
The District was chosen in part for this reason, said Chris Beyrer, professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University who is on the governing council of the International AIDS Society. “We try and select cities where we can use the conference as a tool to try to engage awareness in the local population,” he said.
To help local underserved areas benefit from the conference, the DC Community Coalition has sold day passes at a reduced price of $75 a day. “When national events happen in our city, we often forget the neighborhoods,” said Christine Campbell, vice president of national advocacy and organizing for Housing Works, an advocacy group for people with HIV and AIDS.
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