Arthur Ammann , Global Strategies for HIV Prevention

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When Arthur Ammann and his colleagues discovered children suffering from AIDS in 1982, little was known about the disease. Today, more than two dozen drugs treat those infected by HIV. In resource-poor countries, however, where medical professionals know how to prevent HIV infection, the HIV epidemic continues to spread wildly – particularly among women and children.

Seeing the need for a more comprehensive approach, Ammann left his job as president of the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1998 and founded Global Strategies for HIV Prevention to bring the life-saving drugs to people in underserved regions.

“I knew I had the resources to do something more,” Ammann says. “Medical advances had slowed the HIV epidemic in the U.S. but did not have a perceptible impact in developing countries where there were 3 million to 5 million new infections each year.”

In the past decade, the San Rafael, Calif.-based Global Strategies has raised $22 million for HIV prevention, trained 5,500 health care workers and given drugs or HIV testing kits to 85,000 women in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Cambodia, South Africa and the Dominican Republic. Ammann’s next project is to partner with lawyers and advocates in those areas to address gender inequality and rape, the root causes of HIV transmission.

“We must control this epidemic through HIV prevention,” says Ammann. “The cost of treatment is unaffordable and the loss of lives unacceptable.”