#world-aids-day-2025

#world-aids-day-2025

On that sunny March morning, in a small health center in Lobamba, a rural area of Eswatini, this 32-year-old sex worker has just become one of the first people in the world to receive lenacapavir, a drug that, administered twice a year, offers nearly 100% protection against HIV.

Vick thought about a private blood fund run by one of her former employers and the many conversations she's had with other club members about how to support people with AIDS. A new thought emerged: What if Vick and her peers organized their own blood drive and created a fund for folks with AIDS to ensure their continued access?

Congress has kept key drug assistance funding at $900.3 million annually since 2014. New enrollments for state programs jumped 30% from 2022 to 2024, in part because states cut off pandemic-era Medicaid assistance. As of January, at least 18 states have pulled back their Ryan White AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, known as ADAPs, in some way.

I didn't want to get hearing devices because, to me, there was a horrible stigma. People who wore hearing aids were doddering. They didn't listen, they said, 'what, what,' over and over. Worse, the hearing aid would make this squealing sound. I worried that it was the beginning of the end of me.

Gay dance clubs, besides offering sweaty, blissful spaces to let loose, served as safe havens during the darkest days of the crisis. Places where the LGBTQ community gathered for emotional support, to share vital information, and to raise money for AIDS groups like ACT UP, GMHC, and amfAR.

During the summer of 2020, at the onset of the Covid pandemic, the documentary director Matt Nadel was back home in Boca Raton, Florida. He remembers one particular evening walk that he took with his father, Phil, as they weathered out those early months. As they strode through the neighborhood, Nadel, now 26, said that the prospect of a vaccine was exciting, but the idea of pharmaceutical executives profiting off a devastating virus left him feeling uneasy.

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Black people made up 48 percent of new HIV diagnoses in the South, but only 21 percent of PrEP users in the South; in the Midwest, Black people made up 48 percent of new HIV diagnoses, but only 12 percent of PrEP users. This regional disparity demonstrates the significant gap between HIV burden and preventive medication access among Black populations across different areas of the country.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

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By the mid-1980s, the AIDS epidemic had completely gripped the nation. Its victims, primarily queer men, were dying by the thousands. Fear and misinformation reigned supreme, and our government refused to respond to the crisis. Reverend Charles Angel, a community leader and activist who was living with HIV himself, recognized that queer men of color faced additional disparities due to cultural norms and societal inequities.