The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is a South African HIV/AIDS activist organisation which was co-founded by the HIV-positive activist Zackie Achmat in 1998. TAC is rooted in the experiences, direct action tactics and anti-apartheid background of its founder. TAC has been credited with forcing the reluctant government of former South African President Thabo Mbeki to begin making antiretroviral drugs available to South Africans.
Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) is an international nonprofit organization advocacy and education organization with focus on drug policy, war on drugs, marijuana legalization, psychedelics, juvenile justice and youth rights, drug decriminalization, criminal justice reform. SSDP promotes global youth civic engagement as a tool in reforming drug policy.
The United States President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is a United States governmental initiative to address the global HIV/AIDS epidemic and help save the lives of those suffering from the disease. Launched by U.S. President George W. Bush in 2003, as of May 2020, PEPFAR has provided about $90 billion in cumulative funding for HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention, and research since its inception, making it the largest global health program focused on a single disease in history until the COVID-19 pandemic. PEPFAR is implemented by a combination of U.S. government agencies in over 50 countries and overseen by the Global AIDS Coordinator at the United States Department of State. As of 2023, PEPFAR has saved over 25 million lives, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa.
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) is a Los Angeles-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and advocacy services. As of 2022, it operates about 400 clinics, 69 outpatient healthcare centers, 62 pharmacies, and 22 Out of the Closet thrift stores across 15 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and 45 countries, with more than 5,000 employees, and provides care to more than 1.8 million patients. The organization's aim is to end the AIDS epidemic by ensuring access to quality healthcare, including HIV and STD testing, prescription of medications like Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), and referrals to speciality pharmacies. AHF is the largest provider of PrEP in the United States, though its founder Michael Weinstein has received criticism for his past opposition to the drug.
James Packard Love is the director of Knowledge Ecology International, formerly known as the Consumer Project on Technology, a non-governmental organization with offices in Washington, D.C., and Geneva, that works mainly on matters concerning knowledge management and governance, including intellectual property policy and practice and innovation policy, particularly as they relate to health care and access to knowledge.
Global Justice is a US-based non-governmental organization, founded in 2001 at Harvard University by undergraduate and graduate students. With several different issue campaigns, the organization has chapters on over 15 high school and college campuses across the country.
Co-founder of Jamaica AIDS Support for Life, Ian McKnight served as Executive Director for this organization from 1991 until 2002. Later he worked as Director of Targeted Interventions and Director for Social Marketing and Public Education with JASL. He then worked as Violence Prevention Specialist and Media and Communications Specialist on JA-STYLE, a USAID-funded/Ministry of Health adolescent reproductive health project.
Global Action for Children (GAC) was a highly effective nonpartisan coalition dedicated to improving the lives of orphans and vulnerable children in the developing world active from 2004 - 2010.
Youthforce was an international youth network founded in 1999 to raise visibility around the impact of HIV/AIDS on youth.
HIV/AIDS was first detected in Canada in 1982. In 2018, there were approximately 62,050 people living with HIV/AIDS in Canada. It was estimated that 8,300 people were living with undiagnosed HIV in 2018. Mortality has decreased due to medical advances against HIV/AIDS, especially highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART).
Dr. Kamiar Alaei and his brother Dr. Arash Alaei are two Iranian HIV/AIDS doctors who were detained in Tehran's Evin prison from June 2008 through Dec 2010 and August 2011, respectively. Prior to their arrest, they developed harm-reduction programs in Iran and developed the program Global Health in the Middle East and Central Asia, an HIV/AIDS training program for regional health experts.
Benjamin McDonald Wikler is an American politician and the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin since July 2019. He is a former Senior Advisor at MoveOn.
The cost of HIV treatment is a complicated issue with an extremely wide range of costs due to varying factors such as the type of antiretroviral therapy and the country in which the treatment is administered. The first line therapy of HIV, or the initial antiretroviral drug regimen for an HIV-infected patient, is generally cheaper than subsequent second-line or third-line therapies. There is also a great variability of drug prices among low, middle, and high income countries. In general, low-income countries have the lowest cost of antiretroviral therapy, while middle- and high-income tend to have considerably higher costs. Certain prices of HIV drugs may be high and difficult to afford due to patent barriers on antiretroviral drugs and slow regulatory approval for drugs, which may lead to indirect consequences such as greater HIV drug resistance and an increased number of opportunistic infections. Government and activist movements have taken efforts to limit the price of HIV drugs.
The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) is a Unitaid-backed international organisation founded in July 2010, based in Geneva, Switzerland. Its public health driven business model aims to lower the prices of HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis C medicines and facilitate the development of better-adapted HIV treatments through voluntary licensing and patent pooling. Its goal is to improve access to affordable and appropriate HIV, hepatitis C and tuberculosis medicines in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). In May 2020, the MPP become an implementing partner of the WHO's Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP).
Salim S. Abdool Karim, MBChB, MMed, MS(Epi), FFPHM, FFPath (Virol), DipData, PhD, DSc(hc), FRS is a South African public health physician, epidemiologist and virologist who has played a leading role in the AIDS and COVID-19 pandemic. His scientific contributions have impacted the landscape of HIV prevention and treatment, saving thousands of lives.
Dr. Debrework Zewdie, former director of the World Bank Global AIDS Program and Deputy Executive Director and COO of the Global Fund, is an Ethiopian national who has led strategy, policy implementation, and management of development programs at country, regional, and global levels for international bodies such as the World Bank and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. As an immunologist, she conceptualized and managed the groundbreaking US$1 billion Multi-country HIV/AIDS Program that changed the AIDS funding landscape and pioneered the large-scale multi-sectorial response with direct financing to civil society and the private sector. Dr. Zewdie led the articulation of the World Bank's first global strategy on HIV/AIDS and the Global HIV/AIDS Program of Action. As a founding UNAIDS Global Coordinator, she has been instrumental in making the unique cooperative structure of the UNAIDS family a working reality, fostering strong inter-agency partnerships. She is an advocate for women's health and was a founding vice president and member of the Society for Women and AIDS in Africa (SWAA). She established institutional rigor at the Global Fund and led its wide-ranging internal reform which culminated in the ongoing corporate transformation program. Dr. Zewdie has a Ph.D. in clinical immunology from the University of London, a postdoctoral fellowship at SYVA Company, and was a Senior MacArthur Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. Dr. Zewdie was a Richard L. and Ronay A. Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2015. During her Fellowship at the Harvard Chan School, she also participated as a speaker on Voices in Leadership, an original webcast series, in a discussion titled, "Leadership in Getting AIDS on the World Bank Agenda", moderated by Dr. Barry Bloom.
Volodymyr Zhovtyak is a Ukrainian social activist and a human rights defender. He is one of the leaders of the movement of people living with HIV/AIDS in Ukraine, and in the region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. He is one of the founders of the national and international non-governmental organizations of PLWH, which collaborates with institutions of the United Nations, the European Union and the USA, as well as with the Cabinet of Ministers and the Presidential Administration of Ukraine.
Kenyon Farrow is an American writer, activist, director, and educator focused on progressive racial and economic justice issues related to the LGBTQ community. He served as the executive director of Queers for Economic Justice, policy institute fellow with National LGBTQ Task Force, U.S. & Global Health Policy Director of Treatment Action Group, public education and communications coordinator for the New York State Black Gay Network, senior editor with TheBody.com and TheBodyPro.com, and co-executive director of Partners for Dignity and Rights. In 2021, Farrow joined PrEP4All as managing director of advocacy & organizing.
Social and political activism to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS, as well as to raise funds for effective treatment and care of people with AIDS (PWAs), has taken place in multiple nations across the world since the 1980s. As a disease that began in marginalized populations, efforts to mobilize funding, treatment, and fight discrimination have largely been dependent on the work of grassroots organizers directly confronting public health organizations as well as politicians, drug companies, and other institutions.
The Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge, known as I-MAK, is a U.S.-based global 501(c)(3) organization that advocates in the public interest for affordable access to medicines, and a medicines system that is more inclusive of patients and the public.
