Elton John awarded medal by Joe Biden for his work to end Aids

Singer moved to tears as US president awards him National Humanities Medal after White House performance

Elton John was moved to tears after being awarded the National Humanities Medal for his work to end Aids by the US president following a special performance at the White House.

The singer performed on the White House lawn for the president and first lady and about 2,000 “everyday history makers” on Friday night.

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India’s HIV patients say shortages leaving hundreds of thousands without drugs

Campaigners say many people have had to stop or switch antiretroviral medication regimes – but the government denies supply crisis

Hundreds of thousands of people living with HIV in India are struggling to access treatment because of a shortage of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, according to campaigners.

Up to 500,000 people have not been able to get hold of free ARVs from government health centres and hospitals over the past five months, they say, as the country experiences stock shortages of key drugs.

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Leading figures urge drugs firm to lower price of ‘game-changing’ HIV prevention drug

Signatories including Olly Alexander, Stephen Fry and Joseph Stiglitz issue a letter asking ViiV to make cabotegravir affordable to low- and middle-income countries

Nobel laureates, business leaders, former premiers and celebrities have urged a UK pharmaceutical company to lower the price of its groundbreaking HIV prevention drug and ensure it is not kept “out of reach” of the world’s poor.

In a letter signed by dozens of high-profile figures, including Sir Richard Branson, the singer Olly Alexander, the economist Joseph Stiglitz and Helen Clark, the former prime minister of New Zealand, the pharmaceutical company ViiV Healthcare is praised for having developed the first of a new kind of HIV prevention drug.

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‘Africa must be self-sufficient’: John Nkengasong on learning the deadly lessons of pandemics

The outgoing director of Africa Centres for Disease Control has seen Ebola, Aids and now Covid – and warns complacency is dangerous

The past five years have been “like going from one fire to the next, with barely any time to catch your breath”, says John Nkengasong, the outgoing head of the body charged with responding to health emergencies in Africa.

A relentless term as the first director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) saw Nkengasong manage the response to Ebola and Lassa fever outbreaks. But nothing compared to the formidable test brought by Covid-19.

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Patients dying as conflict prevents supplies reaching Tigray hospitals

Medics unable to keep babies alive, says doctor, as Ethiopia’s civil war creates desperate shortages of drugs, oxygen, fuel and food

People in Tigray are dying due to a lack of oxygen and medicines, a doctor at the region’s largest hospital has said, as medics struggle to care for the sick amid frequent electricity blackouts and fuel shortages.

As the 16-month conflict between Tigrayan forces and Ethiopian government forces drags on, the isolated northern region of 5.5 million people continues to suffer under what the UN has called a de facto blockade.

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Increase funding or abandon hope of ending malaria, TB and Aids, UK warned

Global Fund urges UK and other donors to pledge billions to get efforts to end diseases by 2030 ‘back on track’ after catastrophic impact of Covid

Britain is being urged to pledge billions of dollars to get the fight against malaria, tuberculosis and Aids “back on track” after efforts were ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The UK has historically been one of the main donors to the Global Fund, an international financing organisation aimed at ending the three deadly epidemics by 2030. Now it is warning that, unless donors make an unprecedented total funding pledge of $18bn (£13.25bn) this year, that goal will be missed.

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Third person apparently cured of HIV using novel stem cell transplant

Patient is mixed-race woman treated in New York using umbilical cord blood, in technique raising chances of finding suitable donors

Scientists appear to have cured a third person, and the first woman, of HIV using a novel stem cell transplant method, American researchers in Denver, Colorado, said on Tuesday.

The patient, a woman of mixed race, was treated using a new method that involved umbilical cord blood, which is more readily available than the adult stem cells which are often used in bone marrow transplants, according to the New York Times.

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Joy and nakedness at San Francisco’s Dyke March: Phyllis Christopher’s best photograph

‘The march is like our Christmas – the biggest night of the year, where women celebrate half naked and anything goes’

In San Francisco, the night before the annual Pride parade is reserved for the Dyke March, a celebration of lesbian life throughout the city. It was like our Christmas – the biggest night of the year – and half of us would be so hungover we wouldn’t make it to Pride the next day.

I remember getting a call from an editor at On Our Backs, a lesbian magazine run by women that billed itself as offering “entertainment for the adventurous lesbian”. It was a bedrock of the lesbian community – one of the few ways to communicate with one another, and to celebrate sex and educate each other about it at a time when Aids had brought so much devastation to queer communities. The editor wanted me to shoot a kiss-in, but the tone of her voice sounded almost guilty – like she couldn’t quite bring herself to ask me to work on the biggest party night of the year. But to me, it was the most fun I could imagine.

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Russell T Davies: ‘I genuinely thought – who wants to watch a show about Aids?’

It’s a Sin has been voted the Guardian’s best TV show of the year. Russell T Davies reveals why it took him 30 years to write, who the real Colin is – and why he just can’t keep away from Doctor Who

The 50 best TV shows of 2021, No 1: It’s a Sin

Russell T Davies doesn’t hold back. If he’s thrilled, he shouts about it. And sure enough, the 6ft 6in giant of a man is shouting today. “I’m gobsmacked. I’ve never come first in this. Ever,he exclaims, admitting that he has always had his eye on the Guardian’s list of the best TV of the year. “If I’ve had a show on, I spend every December watching that countdown wondering if I’ll be on it – I think A Very English Scandal got to No 2.” He’s right, it did. Three years on, his wonderful Channel 4 mini-series It’s a Sin has been voted the Guardian’s best TV show of the year. “I’m ridiculously thrilled,” says Davies, who is Zooming from his home in Manchester.

It’s 30 years since his first TV series – Dark Season, featuring a 15-year-old Kate Winslet – aired on the BBC. Since then, Davies has created any number of groundbreaking dramas (including Queer as Folk; Cucumber, Banana and Tofu; Years and Years) as well as breathing new life into Doctor Who. But he is particularly pleased to have won for It’s a Sin, the five-part drama about a group of young gay friends living – and dying – through the Aids era of the 80s and early 90s. This is the show he knew he had to write 30 years ago, and spent the intervening decades years putting off, because it was simply too personal and painful.

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Why uncontrolled HIV may be behind the emergence of Omicron

Analysis: experts say weakened immune systems may give rise to new Covid variants – so HIV prevention could be key to stopping coronavirus

Where did Omicron come from? By all accounts it is a weird variant. Though highly mutated, it descended not from one of the other variants of concern, such as Alpha, Beta or Delta, but from coronavirus that was circulating maybe 18 months ago. So where has it been all this time? And why is it only wreaking havoc now?

Researchers are exploring a number of hunches. One is that Omicron arose in a remote region of southern Africa but failed to spread until now. Another is that it evolved in infected animals, such as rats, and then crossed back into humans. But a third explanation is gaining ground as more data come to light, that Omicron arose in a person with a weakened immune system: someone having cancer treatment perhaps, an organ transplant patient or someone with uncontrolled HIV.

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Prince Harry compares Covid vaccine inequity to HIV struggle

Duke of Sussex says on World Aids Day that vaccinating the world against Covid is ‘test of our moral character’

The Duke of Sussex has warned of “corporate greed and political failure” prolonging the Covid pandemic, comparing a “spectacular failure” of global vaccine equity to the struggle by millions to access HIV medicines.

In a letter read out at a World Health Organization (WHO) and UNAIDS event on World Aids Day, Prince Harry said lessons must be learned from the HIV/Aids pandemic.

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Even after 40 years the response to Aids in many countries is still held back by stigma | Hakima Himmich and Mike Podmore

It is hard to protect yourself from HIV when having sterile syringes or condoms can lead to arrest: discrimination is restricting progress in eliminating HIV

Forty years after the first cases of Aids were discovered, goals for its global elimination have yet to be achieved. In 2020, nearly 700,000 people died of Aids-related illnesses and 1.5 million people were newly infected with HIV.

This is despite scientific and medical advances in the testing, treatment and care of people living with HIV.

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Warning on tackling HIV as WHO finds rise in resistance to antiretroviral drugs

Nearly half of newly diagnosed infants in 10 countries have drug-resistant HIV, study finds, underlining need for new alternatives

HIV drug resistance is on the rise, according to a new report, which found that the number of people with the virus being treated with antiretrovirals had risen to 27.5 million – an annual increase of 2 million.

Four out of five countries with high rates had seen success in suppressing the virus with antiretroviral treatments, according to the World Health Organization’s HIV drug-resistance report.

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Flu, cancer, HIV: after Covid success, what next for mRNA vaccines?

The technology was viewed with scepticism before the pandemic but there is now growing confidence about its use

It is one of the most remarkable success stories of the pandemic: the unproven technology that delivered the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines in record time, helping to turn the tide on Covid-19. The vaccines are based on mRNA, the molecule that instructs our cells to make specific proteins. By injecting synthetic mRNA, our cells are turned into on-demand vaccine factories, pumping out any protein we want our immune system to learn to recognise and destroy.

Pre-pandemic, the technology was viewed with scepticism – a clever concept, but not guaranteed to deliver. Now there is growing confidence that mRNA vaccines could have far-reaching applications in tackling diseases from flu to malaria.

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‘Collective strength’: the LRA captive restoring dignity to survivors in Uganda

Kidnapped by Lord’s Resistance Army rebels as a girl, Victoria Nyanjura has pushed through major reforms for victims of abduction and rape

When Victoria Nyanjura was abducted from her Catholic boarding school in northern Uganda by members of the Lord’s Resistance Army, she prayed to God asking to die.

She was 14 when she was taken, along with 29 others, in the middle of the night. During the next eight years in captivity she was subjected to beatings, starvation, rape and other horrors that she cannot talk about even 18 years later. Five of the girls who were taken prisoner with her died, and Nyanjura gave birth to two children.

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I thought HIV meant death but it led me to fight to save millions of lives | Vuyiseka Dubula

Twenty years ago in South Africa people were dying unable to access expensive antiretrovirals. The creation of the Global Fund was gamechanging

In 2001, at the age of 22 – when I thought my life had just begun – I was diagnosed with HIV. At that time, the diagnosis felt like a death sentence. Every day, I waited for my hour to die.

However, after two months of waiting, death didn’t come.

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Magic Johnson: the NBA superstar who smashed HIV stigma – then built a huge fortune

He stunned basketball fans and transformed HIV awareness by announcing his diagnosis in 1991. Thirty years on, he discusses his relationship with Anthony Fauci, the meaning of money and why he’s still optimistic

On 7 November 1991, a press conference in Inglewood, California, brought America to a standstill. Against a black-draped backdrop, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and multicoloured tie, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, spoke calmly into a single microphone and told the world that he had been diagnosed with HIV.

Cameras flashed and reporters clamoured to ask questions, but Johnson, National Basketball Association (NBA) superstar and one of the world’s most revered athletes, appeared unfazed as he announced his immediate retirement. Had he grappled with his own mortality? When had he found out? How had he acquired the virus? What would he do next?

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Simon Jenkins is wrong about the NHS infected blood inquiry | Letters

A public inquiry was the only way to get justice for those affected by this scandal, which went on for two decades and was covered up for 20 years more, writes Diana Johnson MP

I categorically disagree with the comments from Simon Jenkins about the use and purpose of public inquiries, and with his particular reference to the NHS infected blood inquiry (Public inquiries are institutionally corrupt, we should just give the money to victims, 17 June) .

After nearly 40 years of campaigning and the refusal by the state to acknowledge the harm done to thousands of people, the NHS infected blood inquiry was finally announced in 2017 when all opposition parties in the Commons came together, threatening to vote against Theresa May’s minority government.

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My husband’s death inspired It’s a Sin scene, says Russell T Davies

In new Guardian podcast, TV dramatist tells Grace Dent about writing Colin’s final hours

Russell T Davies, the writer of It’s a Sin, the Channel 4 drama about the HIV/Aids epidemic in the late 1980s, has revealed that the death of Colin, one of show’s characters, was partly based on the death of his partner.

Speaking to the food writer Grace Dent on a new Guardian podcast, Comfort Eating, which launches on Tuesday, Davies said he had drawn on the experience of watching his husband, Andrew Smith, die from brain cancer in 2018 to write the scenes featuring Colin’s death.

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Marc Thompson: how an HIV diagnosis at 17 helped him change Britain

In 30 years as an activist, he has fought to stop black gay men being forgotten, broken taboos about homosexuality and campaigned to make life-changing PrEP medication available on the NHS

Marc Thompson was 17 when he found out he had HIV. He had been out as gay for only a year when a friend suggested he get himself tested. “I thought: ‘Yeah, why not? I’m not going to be positive.’ You had to wait two weeks for the results back then – I’d actually arranged to have lunch with a friend on the day they were due, because it never occurred to me that I would be positive.”

Thompson says he will never forget how he felt that day – partly because he is still asked about it all the time. As one of the UK’s leading HIV, Aids and queer black men’s health campaigners, sharing his own experience comes with the job. “I felt complete and utter numbness,” he says. “All I could hear was white noise. I was walking around in a daze.”

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