Those who know me know that I am obsessed with Keith Haring. His art, his behaviorism, and everything he represented culturally. He was more than a vision artist. He was a sincere word that made HIV appearing through bold lines and public murals when silence was fatal. With a constant attack on this year’s science, LGBTQ rights and public health, I often discovered questions. What will Keith Haring draw now? What will he say at the moment of this crisis?
But I did not expect him to appear in Rwanda.
Nevertheless, he was in Ki Gali. He was projected on the screen at the opening ceremony of the IAS (IAS) of the International AIDS Society (IAS), the 13th IAS meeting on HIV science held in Ki Galli from July 13 to 17. Haring is a notable dr. of the desmon tutu foundation of the Desmond Tutu Hiv’s Desmon Tutu Foundation Called by Linda-Gail Bekker. She is not mentioning art. She was dominating memory. She reminded us that the HIV movement was made in the United States and South Africa, and that the fire was burning again in 2025.
The reference was a turning point for me. I expected to travel to IAS 2025 from Washington DC to feel despair and despair. Budget cuts, stigma rises, and progress have been suspended. But at that moment, that is, defendant, advocacy, and elasticity were the injecting of hope and inspiration that we all needed. It landed in the room like an electric shock. We carried that energy for a week. And did you feel good?
The advocacy is back and multi -family
IAS 2025 does not show the progress of the lab. It was about the driving force of the street. Veteran activists who helped start the global HIV response are returning to the fight. And they connect weapons with new generations of advocates, such as young, worldwide, worldwide, non -selfish, and digital fluency. This message is obvious from Johannesburg to New York, Lagus and Auckland. We will not be erased. We will not go back.
It does not go back to invisible. It does not return to crime. It does not go back to a fragmented reaction that ignores the demands of the most marginalized people.
This is a exercise that always knows how to see and hear yourself. And in 2025, the fire was ruled by the Trump administration directly to the dangerous attempt to dismantle decades of progress. Sportsmen Transporting a coffin to the State Department Preparing for the dice and protests in the parliamentary hall Runned the streets of South Africa-It is not perfume, but for survival. The spirit that does not compromise the same through KIGALI.
Voice too often in decision making such as sex workers, gay men, transgender leaders, drugs, immigrants and young people living in HIV. They were not only included. They led.
There was a primitive conversation about how easy it was to stop global momentum when the vulnerability, politics, prejudice and poverty of progress were collided with. But there was an emergency achievement. In community -led research Self -management AI power model The message was clearly appropriate for the main population. The community is not a later idea, but a front line.
Evidence: Advice provides victory
Ki Gallie’s activists gathered to handle the HIV movement as one of the biggest legislative victories this year. member Removal In the Trump administration’s withdrawal of $ 9.4 billion, the president’s emergency plan for AIDS relief must take over one of the world’s most successful global health programs.
The $ 400 million proposed for PEPFAR was not another budget line. Removal was a signal. Sacrifice support for HIV programs is still powerful in polarized political environments. And it has strengthened what we already know: continuous advocacy, strategic, and constant advocacy still can still change the process of policy.
More importantly, despite deep divisions, Congress still signed a signal that it still leads the line when dismantling the HIV and AIDS programs that still save life.
Science is moving
Along with the political victory, HIV science has created a headline.
- Merck III stage test presentation One HIV preventive pill a month represents a major milestone and responds to many years of community demands for expanded options beyond the daily oral dictionary (Prep).
- Gilead’s new Supply contract We promise that the HIV processing and preventive tools to save life will be cheaper to more people through global funds.
- Medical officer Voluntary license transaction The pharmaceutical patent pool is a stage for a wide range of approaches to Cabotegravir, which works in the long term in low and medium -income countries.
- World Health Organization (Who)) Released New map Lenacapavir is approved as an additional option within a combination HIV prevention strategy, indicating the growth exercise for long -term tools in global reactions.
None of these developments did not occur in vacuum. They appear behind parliamentary hearings, panels, protests and scenes There is no science without access.
This announcement and the group energy behind it have made IAS 2025 a historic meeting. I believe it belongs to the same breath as Vancouver 1996. HIV treatment I changed the survival process. Duban 2000 approaches and puts global inequality Africa in the center Response; And vienna 2010, When prepared As a game change tool. This was a moment when science, policy and behavioralism collided to change the trajectory of HIV reactions, and now Kigali is proudly between them.
Keith Haring will be triggered at the IAS 2025 General Assembly.Jirair Ratevosian
And there was Keith
Go back to Keith Haring.
Keith never made it at the IAS meeting. When he died at the age of 31 in 1990, there was no meeting we knew today. There was no preparation. It is not the same as it cannot be detected (u = u). There is no global fund. There is no pepfar. You can’t inject in the long run to prevent HIV with two shots a year.
What was there? stigma. still. And many deaths.
Nevertheless, Keith continued to draw.
Keith Haring’s art formed a story of the AIDS, not a response to the crisis. When political leaders ignored the infectious diseases and stigmatized those who were influenced by the media, Haring’s bold lines and shining characters went through silence. He brought AIDS’s reality to distance, subway, and gallery to humanize crises and mobilized actions using accessible images. His work did not require permission. It demanded attention.
So what are he doing now?
Perhaps he will sketch vaccine syringes and preparation medicine in the buildings of Los Angeles and Nairobi. Biosensic Tools are transformed into a symbol of bold hope. He uses public art to cut his color and clarity to make complex science visible and human visible and human. And he worked with young and brought to amplifying new voices by working with queer, black, brown and trans an artist, and again imagined how the access and equity of HIV prevention could look like.
Best of all, he will tell us. Don’t look far.
The work continues
This year’s international AIDS meeting reminded us that advocacy is not the relics of the past, but the most powerful tool for the future. Exercise is alive. The fire is burning. The message is clear from Ki Galli to Congress, Clinic to Community Center, and Art to Action.
We are still here.
We will not go back.
And we are not over yet.
Jirair Ratevosian, DRPH is a Hock Fellow of Duke Global Health Institute and a non -resident global health policy expert in strategy and international research centers.
