Programme

North-South: the political economy of affliction
Chair: Rainer Sauerborn, Medical Faculty, Heidelberg University, Germany

Infections and Inequalities: examples from Haiti and Peru
Paul Farmer, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, USA

New challenges for research partnerships to alleviate disease burden and poverty
Marcel Tanner, Director, Swiss Tropical Institute, Basel, Switzerland

The embodiment of inequality: political anthropology of AIDS in southern Africa
Didier Fassin, School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), University of Paris North/Inserm, France

Neglected diseases, underfunded research, poor health interventions: can we change this reality?
Carlos Morel, Tropical Disease Research, WHO, Geneva, Switzerland

The big killers: past, present and future
Chair: Michel Glauser, Medical Faculty, University of Lausanne, Switzerland

HIV and AIDS
Robin A. Weiss, University College, London, UK

The economic divide: politics, research and control of TB in the developing world
Paul van Helden, Stellenbosch University Tygerberg, South Africa

Past problems and future opportunities for malaria and dengue control
Janet Hemingway, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, UK

The gaps: wealth, life expectancy, public health infrastructure and the big global killers
Laurie Garrett, writer and journalist, Newsday, New York, USA

Panel discussion
Johannes Sommerfeld, Chair, Social, Economic and Behavioural Research, WHO-TDR, Geneva, Switzerland
Ruth M. Ruprecht, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, USA
Rachel Snow, Department of Tropical Hygiene and Public Health, Heidelberg University, Germany
Yeya T. Touré, TDR, WHO, Geneva, Switzerland
Hermann Bujard, Centre for Molecular Biology, Heidelberg University, Germany

Consequences and responses
Chair: Hans-Georg Kraeusslich, Medical Faculty, Heidelberg University, Germany

The barriers to the production of new antibiotics
Peter N. Goodfellow, GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals, Essex, UK

Knowledge: a prime weapon of defense against infectious diseases
Helena Maekelae, National Public Health Institute, Helsinki, Finland

Responding to unmet medical and control needs: past experiences and future opportunities
Robert Ridley, Product Research and Development, TDR, WHO, Geneva, Switzerland

Infectious disease control in China: shift from public domination to the public and private partnership
Yiming Shao, National Center for AIDS Prevention and Control, Beijing, China

Panel discussion
Denise P. Barlow, Chair, Institute for Molecular Biology, Salzburg, Austria
Michael Boutros, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, USA
Arachu Castro, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, USA
Patricia Kahn, International AIDS Vaccine Initiative
Helen Epstein, independent writer
Giuseppe Testa, Biotec-Dresden Technical University (TUD)

Biological weapons: uses and abuses of infectious agents
Chair: Friedrich Frischknecht, Laboratoire de Biologie et Genetique du Paludisme, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France

Advances in science and technology: risks, perspectives and responsibilities
Volker Beck, Advisor to the German Foreign Office, Berlin, Germany

The role of the 'Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention' in combating infectious disease
John Walker, Arms Control and Disarmament Research Unit, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London, UK

Bioweapons and genetic engineering: the dual-use problem in the biomedical sciences
Jan van Aken, Sunshine Projekts, Hamburg, Germany