The Trinidad and Tobago transgender activist and community leader Brandy Rodriguez has died.

Ms Rodriguez was a stalwart of national and regional efforts to advance the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. She was the President of the Trinidad and Tobago Transgender Coalition (TTTC). Through her collaboration with the United Caribbean Trans Network (UCTRANS) and the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Transgender People, she contributed to the movement for increased visibility, advocacy and community organization around gender identity issues. She also contributed to policymaking and workplace engagement efforts, including as a member of the Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS.

But her impact went even deeper. As a peer navigator for many years at the Family Planning Association of Trinidad and Tobago (FPATT), Ms Rodriguez provided direct support to members of the transgender community, including street-based sex workers.

She also supported transgender people living with HIV to access testing, treatment and care services. Among Caribbean countries that have reported on HIV prevalence for transgender people, the median HIV prevalence is more than 27%, far higher than that among any other key population group. Ms Rodriguez worked to ensure that members of this community not only started treatment but stayed the course.

From the base of the TTTC in Tunapuna, Trinidad and Tobago, Ms Rodriguez worked to ensure that the most marginalized people in her community had access to food, health care and mental health support. During the COVID-19 pandemic, her organization coordinated relief for transgender people who had lost their means of generating income.

This May she was recognized by Queen Elizabeth II for her advocacy and service when she received the 180th Commonwealth Point of Light award.

“Brandy fought fearlessly against discrimination. And in this fight, she didn’t just ask for recognition or plead for equal access to quality health care, but she made the point that it was a right that must come without conditions. She was determined to settle for nothing less,” a release from FPATT said.

In 2018, she addressed journalists at a regional media sensitization hosted by the UNAIDS Caribbean Sub-Regional Office and the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition. For most of the reporters it was their first time speaking to a transgender person and hearing how stereotypes and prejudice in their reporting were harmful to the community.

“For 22 years it has been an uphill battle, especially in the Caribbean. My conviction to not be silenced and to help vulnerable people keeps me committed to my goal of a better, more inclusive future for all,” Ms Rodriguez said.

The Director of the UNAIDS Caribbean Sub-Regional Office, James Guwani, recognized Ms Rodriguez for her work as a voice for the voiceless.

“She shows why it is imperative that we support community organizations with the ability to connect to those who are hardest to reach. At a time that the global HIV response is focusing on ending inequalities and supporting community-led interventions, we draw inspiration from Ms Rodriguez’s life and work,” he noted.

“The mother of the LGBTI community of Trinidad and Tobago has gained her wings,” said Alexus D’Marco, UCTRANS’ Executive Director. “The work of Brandy Rodriguez will not be forgotten and we must ensure that it continues.”

The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) in Thailand has been awarded the inaugural Circle of Excellence Award at the Fast-Track cities 2021 conference, held recently in Lisbon, Portugal. The Circle of Excellence Award showcases outstanding work in fast-tracking the HIV response and advancing innovative programming to end the AIDS epidemic in cities by 2030.

“To receive the Circle of Excellence Award for Bangkok is a great honour. It demonstrates not only the past achievements but, moreover, the future commitment to accelerate the HIV response and towards ending AIDS in Bangkok. We are proud that innovations have produced remarkable results, particularly same-day antiretroviral therapy and key population-led health services, such as specialized and holistic services for transgender people and the scale-up of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) programmes. These innovations are not only applied in Bangkok but have become models for the region,” said Parnrudee Manomaipiboon, the Director-General of the Department of Health, BMA, during the award ceremony.

Organized by the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, in collaboration with UNAIDS, the Fast-Track Cities Institute and other partners, the Fast-Track cities conference highlighted successes achieved across the Fast-Track cities network, addressed cross-cutting challenges faced by local stakeholders and shared best practices in accelerating urban HIV, tuberculosis and hepatitis B and C responses.

“Bangkok has put in place a 14-year strategic plan for ending AIDS from 2017 to 2030, which is under the leadership of the Bangkok Fast-Track Committee,” said Pavinee Rungthonkij, the Deputy Director-General, Health Department, BMA. “During COVID-19, BMA and partners have introduced innovations such as multimonth antiretroviral therapy, an express delivery of antiretroviral therapy service, sexually transmitted infection self-sampling and PrEP,” she added. Among other achievements, Bangkok has expanded its PrEP services to 16 municipal public health centres and eight city hospitals and implemented citywide awareness campaigns. PrEP in the City was the first citywide PrEP campaign focusing on transgender people in Asia.

“Significant progress has been made in the HIV response since Bangkok joined the Paris Declaration to end the AIDS epidemic in cities in 2014. It shows that mutual commitments and a strengthened partnership between stakeholders at all levels are key to an effective HIV response. Bangkok will continue to leverage support, scale up innovations and Fast-Track solutions to achieve the 2025 targets and end AIDS by 2030,” said Patchara Benjarattanaporn, the UNAIDS Country Director for Thailand.

In the response to the colliding COVID-19 and HIV pandemics, communities continue to demonstrate resilience, agility and innovation. To empower, train and protect communities, UNAIDS, in collaboration with the Namibian Ministry of Health and Social Services and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, is supporting civil society organizations to implement the Partnership to Accelerate COVID-19 Testing (PACT) initiative in Namibia. In addition, community sensitization activities to reduce the spread of COVID-19, and the associated stigma and discrimination, and to minimize its effects on people living with HIV, are being implemented.

In May 2021, Namibia experienced an exponential increase in community transmission of COVID-19 cases owing to the emergence of the delta variant, which derailed the country’s containment efforts and severely stretched its health system. The nation rose to the challenge with strong political leadership and commitment. Evidence-informed and high-impact interventions led to a marked decline in cases, positivity rates and deaths.

Through the PACT initiative, four civil society organizations with experience in working with vulnerable communities and networks of people living with HIV in informal settlements were supported by the Ministry of Health and Social Services and UNAIDS to implement the PACT project. The project focuses on COVID-19 prevention and contact tracing, mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on the HIV response and facilitating access to quality health care in all 14 regions of the country and will ultimately deploy 270 community health workers.

UNAIDS is partnering with three of the four civil society organizations, working in the three regions with the highest burden of HIV and COVID-19, Oshana, Erongo and Khomas, which account for 36% of people living with HIV, 52% of COVID-19 cases and 42% of COVID-19-related deaths nationally. These civil society organizations have done remarkable work to address the needs of key populations, adolescent girls and young women, and people living with HIV using existing HIV infrastructure and systems.

“Ending the two pandemics requires greater data-driven involvement of communities, partnerships, integration of COVID-19 and HIV services and reaching underserved and vulnerable communities. This is the approach that the PACT initiative has taken in Namibia to mitigate the spread of COVID-19,” said Alti Zwandor, UNAIDS Country Director for Namibia.

To adapt, harmonize and sustain the training of community health workers, UNAIDS has been working with the National Health Training Centre, which has adapted the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention training curriculum on COVID-19 to include information on vaccines, HIV and sexual and reproductive health and rights. Forty senior trainers from the training centre were trained to deliver multiple trainings across the country. A further 250 community health workers and 25 supervisors were subsequently trained and deployed to implement community outreach activities. In addition to the house visits and community sensitization activities, one of the nongovernmental organizations, the Tonata people living with HIV network, has incorporated bulk text messages with COVID-19 information in local languages to support groups for people living with HIV, thus spreading awareness of the PACT initiative to a much larger audience.

“The community health-care workers in the field experienced situations where community members were aggressive when given information on COVID-19. In some hotspots, the population also complained of hunger and indicated that they would only engage with community health-care workers once provided with some food hampers so they could concentrate,” said Agatha Kuthedze, Director of the Namibia Planned Parenthood Association (NAPPA). She added that the organization had referred people in need of social welfare to the authorities for further help. 

The initiative will continue to build on the successes and integrate critical HIV and sexual and reproductive health and rights programming while continuously exploring innovations for a sustained and comprehensive HIV response. The partner nongovernmental organizations involved are Tonata, the Walvis Bay Corridor Group, NAPPA and Project Hope.

The Gallery Marie de Holmsky, in the heart of Paris, recently hosted the ArtPositive exhibition, an artistic project by visual artists living with HIV. The initiative aimed to use art as a tool to tackle the stigma, discrimination and isolation that people living with HIV still face.

ArtPositive featured works by visual artists Boré Ivanoff, Adrienne Seed and Nacho Hernandez Alvarez and by photographer Philipp Spiegel.

“We want to remind the world that AIDS is not a thing of the past. We want to remind everyone that all people living with HIV, even though thanks to advances in science they are not as threatened by death as they used to be years ago, today still face extremely cruel and unfair stigma, isolation and even discrimination,” said Mr Ivanoff. “I am convinced that art is the best way to overcome any stigma, isolation and discrimination based on differences and health status.”

About two years ago, after Mr Ivanoff, a Bulgarian-born Parisian artist, decided to make his HIV status public he received many messages of solidarity and support, but some close friends distanced themselves from him. “But this fact convinced me even more that I must continue to fight to open people’s eyes and to overcome this hypocritical way of thinking and treating people who have dared to reveal their HIV status,” he said. He emphasized that along with the creation of art, advocacy and activism are the only things that keep him in some psychological stability and give some existential impulse and a sense of doing something really important and useful for the good of humanity.

Adrienne Seed, an artist, writer, sculptor and HIV activist from Manchester, United Kingdom, who has been living with HIV for almost 10 years, recalled, “Back then, there were very few women speaking openly about living with HIV. I began to speak out via my website, via the media and, of course, via my art.”

“People living with HIV also live with stigma. We are judged by society and we are seemed to deserve some kind of punishment,” said José Manuel González Peeters, an artist living with HIV from Barcelona, Spain.

Philipp Spiegel, a photographer living with HIV from Vienna, Austria, explained that his work is part of a long-term project entitled The Privilege of Intimacy. “My HIV diagnosis stripped me of my feeling of intimacy for a long time; something that was once so natural to me had been taken away, after which I had to embark on a journey to rediscover what intimacy means to me, and to learn to appreciate it even more,” he said. “Reflecting upon this, I realized the absence of intimacy is more widespread than I had thought. Not only people living with HIV, but all people who live in fear of being ostracized or stigmatized for a wide range of reasons. Single mothers, LGBTQ+ people in certain environments or anyone who feels they need to hide out of societal reasons.”

“We, the artists living with HIV would like to express our sincere gratitude to all our official partners and all media around the world who have helped us popularize our cause, the fight against HIV stigma and the awareness that AIDS is not over yet,” said Mr Ivanoff, speaking on behalf of all the participants of ArtPositive.

“Stigma and discrimination results in people being treated differently, excluded from essential services or being subject to undue restrictions on how they live their lives, simply because of who they are. It is great to see how a community of artists living with HIV uses art as a medium to raise awareness and to challenge the drivers of stigma and discrimination among the wider public,” said Laurel Sprague, UNAIDS Special Adviser for Community Mobilization.

Since the West Africa Commission on Drugs launched a groundbreaking model drug law in 2018, civil society across the region and beyond has been engaging stakeholders on the need to use the model law as a blueprint for national reform.

The model drug law promotes, among other things, the availability of harm reduction services as well as the decriminalization of possession of drugs for personal use, which have long been called for by UNAIDS. 

As the model drug law is, by design, a long and technical document, UNAIDS supported the West Africa Drug Policy Network and the International Drug Policy Consortium to develop and disseminate two important new tools for civil society: a shorter and more accessible resource that summarizes the key points of the model drug law and a short guide for local nongovernmental organizations to explore how to use the model drug law in their work. In other words, the first advocacy explainer is about the key “ingredients” of the model drug law and the second contains a list of methods and strategies on how to use these ingredients to better integrate the law in their advocacy and to advance drug policy reform, based on experiences from the region.

The documents were launched on 27 September during a virtual webinar live on Facebook and can be found in English, French and Portuguese at https://www.wadpn.org/resources.

“These new tools will directly support and empower civil society advocacy for more health- and rights-based drug policies in western Africa and, in turn, strengthen the response to HIV among people who use drugs,” said Patrick Brenny, the Director of the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for West and Central Africa.

Adeolu Ogunrombi, a West Africa Commission on Drugs Commissioner, underlined that the needs and demands for drug dependence treatment and harm reduction are high, but service provision is low in the region, and specified that the law provides guidance on this. He also noted that criminalizing the possession of equipment and materials, such as needles, syringes and other paraphernalia, has been demon­strated to undermine harm reduction service provision and uptake and to have a damaging impact on public health.

A case study was presented by Chinwike Okereke, a civil society organization representative and focal point for the West Africa Commission on Drugs in Nigeria, on the use of the model drug law. In 2020, a coalition of civil society organizations made presentations on the model drug law to key policymakers, including the Federal Ministry of Justice, the Drug Law Reform Commission and the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency. “The model drug law presented an opportunity to have face-to-face discussions and drive a buzz on the reform that led to a drug law reform round table where all key federal, criminal justice and state actors and civil society made a case for the adoption of the law as a template for reform,” he said. Further engagement with the Drug Law Reform Commission then led to the setting-up of a working group that is actively working on reshaping drug laws in the country. He also encouraged civil society to use the new explainers and urged technical and funding partners to invest more funding for this effort across western Africa, as law reform takes some time to achieve.

“My life is now in my hands,” says Erick González, a Venezuelan who has been living in Ecuador for almost a year. For a long time, he has looked for a place where he could feel part of society—he has found that place in Diálogo Diverso. 

Based in Quito, the civil society organization created in 2018 works on the protection and promotion of human rights, with an emphasis on gender and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people. Through the Hablemos Positivo (Let’s Talk Positively) initiative, supported by UNAIDS, Diálogo Diverso increased its capacity to respond to the needs of LGBTI migrants during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There are very few entities working on HIV prevention as well as the other health issues to which we are exposed as part of the LGBTI and migrant community,” said Mr González.

Diálogo Diverso is among the 61 organizations that received grants from the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Latin America and the Caribbean as part of the Soy Clave: de las Comunidades para las Comunidades (I Am Key: from Communities to Communities) initiative, a platform that aims to promote community-led social solutions to respond to HIV during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We have received requests from different LGBTI people: Venezuelans, Cubans, Colombians, among others. And we have identified that they all face a very similar migration process,” said Danilo Manzano, the Director and co-founder of Diálogo Diverso, which counts on a team of more than 40 people working in the cities of Quito, Guayaquil, Manta and Cuenca. “But on top of the collective needs as migrants and key populations, it was important to take into account the intersectionality with human rights and the impact of the individual challenges they face in a new country.”

“HIV is one of the reasons why LGBTI people leave the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, given the difficulties in accessing antiretrovirals on a permanent basis, the invisibility of their rights and, on other occasions, hate crimes,” said Andrés Alarcón, an activist with Diálogo Diverso. “This project was born from our experience in serving thousands of LGBTI migrants. And during the pandemic, we identified a particular trend among those living with HIV: lack of information and access to different health services.”

Thanks to a grant provided by UNAIDS, the project delivered hundreds of sexual and reproductive health kits, organized several conversations on health promotion, HIV prevention, sexually transmitted infections and COVID-19 and disseminated a campaign on social networks focused on raising awareness and promoting the human rights of migrant LGBTI people.

“This is a great example of how international organizations, donors and governments can invest in communities so that they can bring social solutions to their own communities while tackling key intersecting issues such as LGBTI rights and migration,” said Guillermo Marquez Villamediana, Senior Community Support Adviser for the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Latin America and the Caribbean. “Their expertise and outreach capacity have been crucial to keeping the HIV response alive for those most vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

One of the highlights of the project was the creation of an alliance between two community-based organizations that work with migrants and refugees in Ecuador, Alianza Igualitaria and Construyendo Igualdad, which extended their reach and allowed them to work with other populations, such as sex workers and young people.

Exclusion based on sexual orientation and gender identity compounds the violations of the human rights of LGBTI migrants and refugees in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. According to a study carried out by Diálogo Diverso and the International Organization for Migration in 2020, 43% of LGBTI migrants in the country had experienced exclusion, discrimination or violence. The same study pointed out that LGBTI migrants and refugees find it difficult to access the health system due to lack of information and awareness about it.

“This project gave me knowledge about the possibilities to avoid HIV infection and transmission,” said Reinaldo Mendoza, a Venezuelan migrant who received support from Hablemos Positivo.

Reina Manteña, the President of the Women’s Association of Cantón Milagro, in Ecuador, said that the partnership with Diálogo Diverso in providing technical advice to LGBTI women has been rewarding. “Many compañeras benefited from the kits and the dialogues. Let’s not forget that in the face of this pandemic, health centres were not providing care nor condoms, which are vital for sex workers,” she said. “In addition, we have provided technical support to Venezuelan sex workers so that they could regularize their situation in the country.” 

For Mr Manzano and his team in Diálogo Diverso it is gratifying to see these results. “It has never been about quantity, but the quality of the assistance we can offer and its real impact on their lives.”

A look back at the early days of AIDS activism highlights stark parallels with the global response to COVID-19.

Previously unseen images from the early 1990s of AIDS activists campaigning for life-saving medicines show that, with slogans such as “Dead from drug profiteers” and “AIDS $ now”, the AIDS activists of yesterday mirror today’s activists in their demand for equal access to COVID-19 vaccines.

However, the photos also highlight how, 40 years after the discovery of the first AIDS cases, the world is repeating the same mistakes in its response to COVID-19, as inequalities continue to be the driving force of infections and deaths.

The photos, taken by French photographer Elizabeth Carecchio, show people marching for HIV treatment at a demonstration in May 1990 at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, DC, United States of America. They are a reminder of the central role played by activists over the years, including today as they continue to advocate for fairer access to treatment and vaccines. In short, they are campaigning for the world to put people before profits, a central call of the People’s Vaccine for COVID-19, which UNAIDS is proud to be part of. 

Photos: Elizabeth Carecchio

“We have changed our way of thinking and our attitude towards people living with HIV. In the jungle, we don’t talk about it, and every day we see more and more people living with the virus,” said Aurora Coronado, a member of the National Federation of Peasant, Artisan, Indigenous, Native and Salaried Women of Peru.

Fenmucarinap, as it is known by its acronym in Spanish, is among the 61 organizations that have received grants from UNAIDS through an initiative called Soy Clave: de las Comunidades para las Comunidades (I Am Key: from Communities to Communities) since its launch in May 2020. The funds support community-led solutions in the response to HIV during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The project allowed us to share knowledge and learn more about HIV. Now knowledge is being passed on. Now we speak from the heart to young people living with HIV and many are taking care of themselves and taking their treatment,” Ms Coronado added.

Almost 5000 kilometres away from the project in the Peruvian jungle, in the Santa Martha Acatitla Penitentiary in Mexico, another community-led initiative was also implemented in the first year of the pandemic. “We can basically say that we saved the lives of people who are generally forgotten, especially in moments like these,” said Georgina Gutiérrez, from the Mexican Movement for Positive Citizenship, whose project was implemented in the same institution in which her husband had been imprisoned for eight years. “Through this initiative, we were able to support a population that lacks basically everything, especially dignity.”

These projects are examples of how small catalytic funds can make a difference and bring a positive impact for entire communities, especially in moments of extreme vulnerability and exacerbated inequalities. Through the Soy Clave initiative, UNAIDS and its partners focus on offering support to community-led projects around three pillars: prevention of the transmission of COVID-19, continuation of the HIV response and upholding human rights and preventing stigma, discrimination and violence towards people living with or affected by HIV and COVID-19.

The Latin America and Caribbean region experiences inequalities that are both deep and widespread and includes countries that are more unequal than those in other regions with similar levels of development, according to recent reports from the Inter-American Development Bank and the Latin American and Caribbean office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The first phase of the US$ 300 000 initiative was launched in July 2020 in response to evidence from several regional online surveys conducted by UNAIDS since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Grants were initially distributed among 31 projects, 10 of which were also funded with the support of UNAIDS Cosponsors through their regional offices—the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) helped fund four projects, whereas the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and UNDP funded two projects each.

Data from the 31 initiatives of the first round of grants collected up to July 2021 by the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Latin America and the Caribbean show that more than 700 000 people in the region had already been reached through the projects’ activities. Altogether, the community-led projects have delivered more than 270 community solutions that have had a direct impact on, for example, the strengthening of health services, the training of vulnerable communities and populations, awareness-raising of key HIV and COVID-19 issues and COVID-19 prevention and mitigation.

Recently, UNAIDS launched a second tranche of funding for 30 community-led initiatives, reaching a total 61 projects in 19 countries (Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of).

“From 40 years of experience in the HIV response, we have learned that civil society and community-led initiatives are essential to reach the most vulnerable. We were right when we decided to invest in these organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic because they have delivered results and have proven that they are crucial to the response to both pandemics,” said Alejandra Corao, Director, a.i., of the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Latin America and the Caribbean. “I congratulate the organizations selected in 2020 and hope that the 30 selected for the second phase of funding will also have the same success in reaching the most vulnerable people in these challenging times for our region.”

The implementing phase for these newly selected projects will run until December 2021. All the initiatives were selected by a joint committee formed by the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Latin America and the Caribbean and the regional offices of UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the Pan American Health Organization.

More than 200 Spanish-speaking and 70 Portuguese-speaking organizations participated in virtual workshops organized by UNAIDS to guide community-led organizations in applications for the Soy Clave initiative and in the creation of projects and the definition of objectives for a US$ 5000 grant.

Impact on communities

HIV activist Marcela Alsina, who is from Honduras and who implemented a regional project with the Asociación para una Vida Mejor (APUVIMEH) and the Latin American Movement of Positive Women (MLCM+), noted that the funds allowed the organizations to carry out an online survey in eight countries and to gather data to define their strategic lines of action.

“We learned that 35% of the women surveyed in these countries suffered some type of gender-based or institutional violence during the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said.

At least 23% of all the funding was directed towards women. Funds were also distributed among projects focused on key and vulnerable populations, including indigenous people, Afro-descendant communities and people on the move.

“Thanks to this funding, our project, Hablemos Positivo (Let's Talk Positively), delivered 450 sexual and reproductive health kits and organized talks on health promotion, HIV prevention, sexually transmitted infections and COVID-19,” said Danilo Manzano, of Diálogo Diverso in Ecuador. “We also disseminated a communication campaign on social media to raise awareness about the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people on the move, as well as people living with HIV.”

“It is not easy to get funding to work with women, especially women living with HIV in Latin America”, said Kattia López, from the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS in Costa Rica, who developed virtual working groups with more than 60 women living in vulnerable conditions and who suffered violence from their partners during the early stages of the pandemic. “We saw that this project gives us the light to reach women that no one else reaches, and to transform their realities. We are not going to leave any of them behind. Investing in women always pays.”

Nilsa Hernandez, 62, used to work as an informal greengrocer in Venezuela to help increase her family income and provide for her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. As a person living with HIV for 16 years, Nilsa had managed to reduce her viral load to undetectable until everything changed suddenly when the political-economic crisis took hold in Venezuela. Health services were severely affected and people living with HIV gradually lost access to regular care, treatment and medication.

"I went about two years without access to treatment. My body started to feel the consequences and I realized that I needed to do something urgently. It was a live or die situation, and I decided to live!", remembers Nilsa.

Nilsa crossed the border and emigrated to Brazil, where HIV treatment is available to everyone through the public health system. It took her a year to prepare for the journey. In 2018, she arrived in Roraima, the Brazilian state bordering Venezuela, with her partner, who also lived with HIV, and her 12-year-old grandson.

They ended up in the streets after suffering all kinds of discrimination and violence. Thanks to the support of people she met, she finally managed to rent a small house in the outskirts of Rio Branco, the capital of Roraima, and resume her HIV treatment. As soon as she recovered immunity, she had no doubt: it was time to become an activist and create Valientes por la Vida (Brave for Life), a voluntary initiative to support other Venezuelans living with HIV who, like her, arrived in Brazil with scarce resources and little information.

"We are brave because it takes a lot of courage to leave your country, often with only the things we had to hand, in search of treatment and in search of life."

Today, as a humanitarian activist, Nilsa has mobilized a network of other Valientes who joined her to spread the word about the arrival of new Venezuelan migrants in search of HIV treatment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected this process, especially when the borders between Brazil and Venezuela were closed in March 2020. “The closure made it very difficult for my compatriots to access HIV treatment that could save their lives. With the reopening of the border, we are now putting these services back on track."

According to the 2020 Annual Report on Epidemiology issued by the state of Roraima’s medical authority, in the years 2018 and 2019, a combined total of 1,137 cases of HIV/AIDS were reported in the state. Among the foreign population, migrants from Venezuela represent the most significant number of the combined HIV/AIDS cases for the same period: 383 people.

Just like Nilsa, many of the Venezuelan people living with HIV migrate to Brazil in search of access to HIV treatment that they are no longer able to have in many parts of the country. In this context, UNAIDS established a partnership with UNESCO in December 2020 in a joint, collaborative and intersectoral strategy to grant Venezuelan migrants access to health education, prevention, and health promotion, and to support the responses of Roraima to HIV and COVID-19.

Claudia Velasquez, UNAIDS Representative and Country Director in Brazil, explains that the proposal is to reduce prejudice, stigma and discrimination related to migrants and refugees, and more vulnerable populations, such as sex workers and LGBTQIA+ population, youth and indigenous peoples.

"We want to promote the empowerment of vulnerable populations through the dissemination of information about HIV and the rights of people living with HIV”, says Ms. Velasquez. “Nilsa Hernandez is an example of a humanitarian activist. And people like her, who are Brave for Life, show the enormous impact that civil society's mobilization has on supporting and welcoming people living with HIV and on the efforts to face stigma and discrimination, which enhance the inequalities that prevent us from ending the AIDS pandemic by 2030."

For the future, Nilsa's dream is for Valientes por la Vida to become an international organization, with volunteers dedicated to supporting people living with HIV to have access to treatment and a healthy life. "I also want people to stop seeing us as HIV positive. This creates a horrible stigma that weighs on us all. We are not HIV positive. We are brave and impatient because we are in a hurry to live like everyone else."

By Brigitte Quenum, UNAIDS Country Director for Côte d’Ivoire

It is with great sadness that I learned on 15 July 2021 of the death of Cyriaque Yapo Ako, one of the pioneers in the response to HIV in Côte d’Ivoire and in Africa as a whole.

A founding member of Ruban Rouge CI in 1994, he never stopped promoting the role of communities in the response to HIV. The Executive Director of RIP+ in the 2000s, he then contributed his expertise to several organizations, including the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, African Men for Sexual Health and Rights and I CHANGE CI, and collaborated with several partners, including UNAIDS, Population Services International, the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the United Nations Development Programme, as a resource person for technical assistance.

As a founding member of Arc-en-Ciel in 2003, the first nongovernmental organization for gay men and other men who have sex with men in the AIDS response in Côte d’Ivoire, he advocated for the need to create a safe space for sexual minorities in Africa, in particular in Côte d’Ivoire, where gay men and other men who have sex with men were commonly subject to stigma, discrimination and violence.

His dynamism and activist spirit enabled him to speak out on behalf of the most marginalized and neglected people in the AIDS response.

From 2004 to 2009, he was the representative of people living with HIV and sexual minorities on the Country Coordinating Mechanism Côte d’Ivoire, where he made a significant contribution to defending people-centred HIV responses in the development of HIV applications to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

His participation in several international conferences contributed to the advocacy of the rights of people living with HIV and more broadly the rights of key populations. He defended his positions, notably through his participation in events such as the International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) in 2008 in Dakar, Senegal, ICASA 2011 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, ICASA 2013 in Cape Town, South Africa, and the 2016 International AIDS Society Conference in Durban, South Africa, with his contribution in the form of oral presentations and statements.

His passing is a great loss to all those involved in the AIDS response, especially those committed to defending the most vulnerable.

He was a friend, brother and colleague to many of us.

May his soul rest in peace.