The development of COVID-19 vaccines has allowed some people to return to “normal life”. But even now, not everyone can access these vaccines, particularly people living in low-income countries.  Unequal access to healthcare is a sadly familiar story for people living with HIV. From 1997 to 2006, an estimated 12 million people on the continent of Africa died because HIV treatment was too expensive.  In this episode of HIV unmuted, the award-winning IAS podcast, we will discuss why these parallels in unfair healthcare access are showing up time and time again, look ahead to the recent monkeypox outbreak, and assess whether we have learnt the critical lessons from COVID-19 and HIV.  Our guests are: Patricia Asero Ochieng is the chairperson of the International Community of Women Living with HIV in Kenya. She was diagnosed with HIV in the 1990s when her daughter was born. In Kenya at the time, access to HIV treatment was scarce and stigma was rampant. Patricia knew the answer lay in access and began advocating for treatment.  Eric Goemaere is an infectious disease specialist with a career spanning 40 years with Médecins Sans Frontières. When Eric arrived in South Africa in the mid-1990s, he was ready for a challenge, working on the biggest HIV epidemic in the world. Little did he expect the greater challenges of access to HIV treatment he was about to face. Meg Doherty is the Director of the Department of Global HIV, Hepatitis and Sexually Transmitted Infections Programmes at the World Health Organization (WHO). Meg helps us to understand why – even when we have the science and means to deal with outbreaks – we continue to have unequal outcomes in global health.  Mike Ryan is the Executive Director for the WHO Health Emergencies Programme. Being at the forefront of managing acute risks to global health for nearly 25 years, Mike discusses pandemic preparedness and access issues in global health and applies this to the current outbreak.   Rena Janamnuaysook is a Program Manager for Transgender Health at the Institute of HIV Research in Bangkok, Thailand, where she established the Tangerine Community Health Clinic, the first trans-led health clinic in Southeast Asia. When COVID-19 hit, she had to pivot at the local level to address the issues that globally continue to hamper our pandemic responses.  If you are listening to this episode before 29 July 2022 and want to learn more about the intersection of HIV, COVID-19, and monkeypox, along with the latest scientific breakthroughs in the HIV response, attend the 24th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2022) virtually or in-person in Montreal.

Eastern Europe and Central Asia is the region of the world where HIV acquisitions are increasing the fastest. In Ukraine, an estimated 260,000 people are living with HIV. Many thousands more are vulnerable to acquiring HIV and rely on access to HIV prevention services. In this episode of HIV unmuted, the IAS podcast, we hear how the Russian invasion of Ukraine could mean a resurgence of Ukraine’s AIDS epidemic. And in a region with an already rapidly growing HIV epidemic, this could be a public health disaster. Our guests are:Valeriia Rachinska from 100% Life, the largest organization of people living with HIV in Ukraine, experienced a Russian invasion when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. After that, she’s not afraid to fight, but she’s afraid to live under Russian occupation. Despite this fear, she stays to help where she is desperately needed.Andriy Klepikov never thought he would be an internally displaced person. Crammed into an office with seven other people and two pets, he tells us how he continues to lead the Alliance for Public Health, delivering critical HIV services.Michel Kazatchkine is an Advisor to the World Health Organization in the region and the former UN Secretary-General Special Envoy on HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. He helps us understand why the HIV epidemic in the region continues to grow and why this war is both a catastrophe for public health and an extraordinary mobilization of solidarity.If you want to help those in need in Ukraine, click on the links below to donate:  ALLIANCE FOR PUBLIC HEALTH AND 100% LIFE If you are listening to this episode before 29 July 2022 and want to learn more about how conflict impacts people living with HIV and the latest scientific breakthroughs in the HIV response, attend the 24th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2022) virtually or in-person in Montreal. 

The discovery of a safe and effective HIV cure would move us closer to a world in which HIV no longer presents a threat to public health and individual well-being.  In this special World AIDS Day episode of HIV unmuted, the IAS podcast, we share the human endeavours behind the journey to a cure – and the hope it would bring to 38 million people living with HIV.   We are joined by:  ·         IAS President-Elect Sharon Lewin on the latest cure strategies and the hope the most recent person cured of HIV, the “Esperanza patient”, provides for a cure  ·         Adam, the “London patient”, and his doctor, Ravi Gupta, on the bone marrow transplant that cured Adam of HIV, and why it’s not a feasible cure for all ·         Moses “Supercharger” Nsubuga on how travelling home next to his coffin to die changed his life and led him to become an HIV cure advocate in Uganda The third edition of Research Priorities for an HIV Cure: IAS Global Scientific Strategy was published on World AIDS Day in Nature Medicine. It highlights critical gaps, progress made, and the next steps science must follow towards a scalable, affordable and culturally appropriate cure. Find out more at iasociety.org/WAD2021