This week, Dr Kimberly Smith (pictured above), Senior Vice President, Chief Scientific Officer, Head of Research & Development at ViiV Healthcare, provides an Expert View on how, through a deep understanding of the HIV community, the company has led the way in changing the HIV treatment and prevention paradigm.
When people ask what motivates me, the answer is always the same – ending HIV. This drive stems from the beginning of my career as a clinician and researcher in Chicago in the 1990s. My colleagues and I refer to this as “the bad old days.” We were just starting to see the devasting impact HIV was having – people were dying around the world, and it seemed like there was nothing we could do to help them. It was truly heartbreaking and fuelled my commitment to finding a way to end this epidemic. The severity of the HIV and AIDS epidemic was just starting to emerge, and I was appalled at the devastation this new virus brought upon so many people and communities.
Thankfully, incredible scientific advances over several decades have changed the trajectory of a HIV diagnosis. No longer the death sentence it once was, people no longer need to take so many pills a day that they set alarms to remember to take them and options for both HIV prevention and treatment are readily available. Yet despite these advances, the number of people living with HIV worldwide continues to rise. In fact, globally there were 40 million people living with HIV in 2023, for context – that’s more than the number of people living in the whole of Canada.
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