I had been an activist on the issue of HIV, primarily in the African American and Latino communities here in the U.S. for many years. It was horrifying to me how the pandemic was raging right here in this country but no one was talking about it.
We see new things all the time. We see new retroviruses out there - which is the category that HIV falls into - and we're very, very concerned because this is the part of the world where HIV jumped from chimpanzees to humans.
The important thing is this Just because I'm doing well doesn't mean that they're going to do well if they get HIV. A lot of people have died since I have announced. This disease is not going anywhere.
The general population still thinks HIV is something that came in the 80s and went away, or that it only affects the gay population or intravenous drug users.
Although it is still important to develop an HIV vaccine, we have significant tools already at our disposal that can make a major impact on the trajectory of this epidemic.