More than 20,000 people are attending the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto, but event organizers say some people couldn't attend because they were denied entry into Canada.

Nigerian journalist Akin Jimoh was able to come to the conference after initially being denied a visa. His wife never managed to get permission to enter the country and had to stay home. 

He's not the only one. The Kaiser Foundation in California sponsored 50 international journalists, five of whom had to stay home in Liberia, Rwanda, Ivory Coast and Haiti because they were refused entry visas.

Jimoh says it's a major loss for the countries whose journalists aren't covering the conference.

"These are journalists from developing countries where HIV affects us more than any part of the world. It is our problem — we need to know what's going on," says Jimoh.

Jimoh was accused of forging a document a day before he was to leave Lagos. He thinks there's a generalization that people visiting from the developing world, given the opportunity, may decide to stay permanently in Canada.

"I've had training in the U.S. I was at MIT. I was at Harvard. I went back to my country. I have no business here because where I have relevance is back home," says Jimoh.

Joan Anderson, a conference organizer, says about 1,200 people on Canadian scholarships were also initially refused visas.  Eighty-five per cent were eventually approved.

Anderson has been working with Citizenship and Immigration Canada to resolve visa applications.

"It's difficult trying to get the message from our discussions at the Ottawa level to ensure that the people at the front line — the visa officers — have a full appreciation of this conference," says Anderson.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada says it doesn't know how many people have been refused visas because the department doesn't track applications by events. The agency it's working with the conference to resolve any further issues.