This event with Winnie Byanyima, the feminist activist who leads the UN’s response to HIV and AIDS and who chairs the People’s Vaccine Alliance for COVID-19, will highlight lessons rooted in ongoing experience from the AIDS response and the commonalities between the two pandemics, as well as learnings from other health crises, to set out an approach that can actually succeed in keeping us all safe.

The COVID-19 crisis has alerted world leaders to the urgency of stopping and preventing pandemics, which are recognised as undermining health, stability, and economic progress. But the path on which the world is embarking to overcome pandemics cannot succeed, because it is failing to address their underlying systemic drivers. Inequalities are increasingly preventing overwhelming majorities in most developing countries from accessing COVID-19 vaccines, enabling the pandemic to spread and the virus to mutate. If we end inequalities upfront, we will increase our odds of ending AIDS, ending COVID-19 and winning against future pandemics. But business as usual will fail. In this time of emergency, the only realistic approach is a radical one, the only safe response is to be bold.

Meet our speaker and chair

Winnie Byanyima (@Winnie_Byanyima) is the Executive Director of UNAIDS and an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. Ms Byanyima leads the United Nations’ efforts to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030. Before joining UNAIDS, Ms Byanyima served as the Executive Director of Oxfam International, a confederation of 20 civil society organizations working in more than 90 countries worldwide.

Justin Parkhurst (@justinparkhurst) is an Associate Professor of Global Health Policy in the LSE Department of Health Policy. He is co-director of the MSc in Health Policy, Planning, and Financing programme, and the current serving Chair of the LSE Global Health Initiative.

More about this event

The Global Health Initiative (@LSEGlobalHealth) is a cross-departmental research platform to increase the coherence and visibility of Global Health research activity across LSE, both internally and externally. It provides support for interdisciplinary engagement and showcases LSE’s ability to apply rigorous social science research to emerging global health challenges.

This event forms part of LSE’s Shaping the Post-COVID World initiative, a series imagining what the world could look like after the crisis, and how we get there. The series will lead up to the LSE Festival 2022, which this year is taking place from Monday 13 to Saturday 18 June 2022.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEPostCOVID

Podcast & Video

A podcast of this event is available to download from How To Beat Pandemics: a route map to ending COVID-19, ending AIDS, and keeping safe from the threats of the future.

A video of this event is available to watch at How To Beat Pandemics: a route map to ending COVID-19, ending AIDS, and keeping safe from the threats of the future.

Podcasts and videos of many LSE events can be found at the LSE Public Lectures and Events: podcasts and videos channel.