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World AIDS Day 2020: Resilience, and our commitment to the work ahead
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The response to the COVID-19 pandemic tested the HIV community’s ingenuity in an unprecedented manner this year — and yet, we continued the march toward HIV epidemic control.
Thanks to resilient systems, quality partnerships and a strong community workforce built over decades, we have been able to deliver HIV services uninterrupted amid the closure of country borders, activity shutdown in entire cities, limitations of movement of people and disruption of logistics and supply chains. Our teams are built for this; in the last decade, we developed innovative ways to reach clients through differentiated care models. Together with people living with HIV, we have been able to lean in and share our expertise to successfully adapt and pivot our programs to online technical assistance and virtual service delivery platforms to ensure continued ownership and benefit to local communities.
As we have continued to deliver HIV services during a pandemic, we have also continued to look beyond the horizon. The announcement of an effective, long-acting, injectable antiretroviral agent (Cabotegravir‑LA) for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) raised hope for a better quality of life for people living with HIV. We have also renewed our commitment to pediatric HIV, a key component of ending AIDS.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said that man discovers himself when he measures himself against the obstacle. As a community, we stand much taller and stronger after confronting this once-in-a-century challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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With regards,
Dr. Otto Nzapfurundi Chabikuli
Director, Global Health, Population and Nutrition
FHI 360
 Otto Chabikuli
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Christian Pitter, Director, Infectious Diseases and Health Systems, FHI 360
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Hally Mahler, Director, HIV Programs, FHI 360
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Photo credits: Kaurisayi Gwazi/FHI 360; Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, no modifications; Raymond Avosseh/FHI 360
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