Speaking powerfully about his own life the singer who launched the Elton John AIDS Foundation (EJAF) two decades ago, made an appeal for a greater movement of partnership, and compassion in order to end AIDS stigma; as well as greater funding for scientific progress towards vaccines and treatments...

"By all rights I shouldn’t be here today, the singer said...

"I should be dead: six foot under in a wooden box. I should have contracted HIV in the 1980s and died in the 1990s, just like Freddie Mercury, just like Rock Hudson. Every day I wonder, how did I survive?

"Everyone deserves compassion. Everyone deserves dignity. Everyone, everyone, everyone deserves love. Why am I telling you this? Because the AIDS disease is caused by a virus, but the AIDS epidemic is not. The AIDS epidemic is fuelled by stigma, violence and indifference..."

The campaigner described how the love of those around him at one stage, including health workers, transformed his life and called for greater kindness towards all sufferers...

John said: "Science can stop the disease, but science alone can't end the plague.

"It's been three decades of this epidemic and we have seen how human beings react when those around them become HIV positive...

"It makes me feel sick to think of this indifference and hate...

"We must celebrate people who show compassion and people who are on treatment..."

The star also praised American contributions to AIDS HIV research and treatments, and said that America could end HIV infections at home with even more investment in funding and a "bit more understanding..."

John's EJAF charity has raised more than $275 million for HIV AIDS programmes in 55 countries...

It has a current mission to reach out to the most marginalised victims of AIDS HIV...

The latest International AIDS Conference in Washington comes at a time of great optimism for AIDS campaigners and scientists...

A decade of unprecedented investment in HIV prevention research has led to major scientific breakthroughs in vaccines and treatments but AIDS organisations are calling for sustained financing if the AIDS epidemic is to be ended...

But even as a preventive AIDS vaccine is thought to be more possible, as Elton John says, funding in research needs to be combined with breaking down prejudice, and ever greater awareness and tolerance towards victims of HIV and AIDS...