Stephen Lewis, Co-director of AIDS-Free World, recalls his years as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa from 2001-2006.
The Envoy years were revolving doors of death. I would sit down one evening in Kigali, or Lusaka, or Kampala, with several men and women from the national association of people living with AIDS, and we’d have an intense conversation about their struggle for survival, and I’d think to myself what a lovely and courageous group they were.
Then I’d return six months later for another meeting, and almost everyone was gone. I’ve never really come to terms with that awful rhythm of life and death. It haunts me still. Unlike others, of more optimistic mien, I just can’t get out of my mind the hundreds of thousands - probably millions - who died unnecessarily in the carnage of the pandemic.