Overseas Chinese AIDS workers would be invited to attend Hong Kong's first AIDS conference in November to boost co-operation, the Director of Health said in Vancouver. Dr Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun, who attended the 11th International Conference on AIDS in the Canadian city, said groups from China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, San Francisco, New York and Canada should attend Hong Kong's own AIDS conference, originally tailor-made for local workers. Ties with numerous overseas organisations were developed after a symposium held by the Hong Kong AIDS Foundation on Tuesday brought together for the first time workers serving in Chinese communities to share work experiences. AIDS Foundation chairman Dr Leong Che-hung said the November conference would be a chance to consolidate their partnership. 'We have already established a global network and drawn up a more complete contact list. On top of that it has been suggested after the first symposium that a secretariat should be set up in Hong Kong to facilitate the exchange of information in future. We are going to add this to the conference's agenda,' he said. Director of China's Ministry of Health's department of disease control, Dr Shen Jie , who gave a keynote speech at the symposium highlighting the worsening AIDS epidemic in the mainland, also promised to visit Hong Kong, said Dr Leong. The two-day local AIDS conference is to be held in the AC Hall, Kowloon Tong, from November 8 to 9.
