Lois Chingandu is the Director of Evidence and Influence at Frontline AIDS. A nurse by training, Lois was already working on HIV in the 1980s, providing home-based care to patients in Zimbabwe. She used the anger and helplessness that she felt watching people in Africa die without access to the treatment that was available elsewhere to fuel her HIV activism. Now, decades later, the same anger fuels her activism against COVID-19 vaccine apartheid.
We hear from Lois on her personal experiences – both her memories from the HIV pandemic and her difficult recent ordeal as a COVID-19 survivor who has sadly lost loved ones to the pandemic. We also discuss issues of global equity, funding systems – for both HIV and COVID-19 – and how civil society can hold funders and leaders to account.
Lois is a fighter and an inspiration. We hope this conversation motivates all of us, especially on the more challenging days, to push forward in this ongoing war for equity.
Additional Content:
Our World in Data Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations
Vaccine access and challenges facing Africa (SABC News - December 11, 2020)
The impact of COVID-19 on HIV, TB and malaria services and systems for health (Global Fund Report - April 2021)
Guest: Lois Chingandu
Producer and Host: Maaza Seyoum
Production & Editing Support: Volume
Executive Producer: Tian Johnson
Queries: info@africanalliance.org.za
