Bruce Kilmister Delegates to the World AIDS Conference are stunned and waiting numbly to find out which of their many friends and professional associates are amongst the dead from the destruction of flight MH17 over Ukraine. Amongst them in Melbourne is the head of Body Positive, New Zealand's largest HIV-positive people's peer support and advocacy organisation, Bruce Kilmister. He says the much-awaited build up to the opening of the World AIDS Conference "has been turned on its head with the loss of so many coming to Melbourne." Some unconfirmed reports suggest upwards of 100 of the almost three hundred killed when the plane was shot down were en route to the conference. "I have been going to these conferences for over twenty years and over that time I have made many friends from all over the world," Kilmister says from Melbourne. He says there is a "dark cloud over all the preparation" as he and the hundreds of other delegates wait to find out who was on the flight. "I know I will know someone... how many is too frightening to contemplate. Until the names are released we will just have to wait and this has cast a sadness over this conference."
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Friday, 18th July 2014 - 9:21pm