It has been 40 years since AIDS was first reported. HIV unmuted, the International AIDS Society (IAS) podcast, talks to the global HIV change makers who have shaped the response and asks what we must do to end the AIDS epidemic.

In 1987, the United States introduced the world’s first laws criminalizing HIV. Today, despite scientific evidence that HIV criminalization harms public health, 92 countries still have laws that are used to prosecute people living with HIV.

In this fourth episode of HIV unmuted, we hear how these unjust laws have forever changed the lives of three people living with HIV and what must be done to end the criminalization of HIV.

Listen now to their stories of injustice, fear and stigma:

  • Justice Edwin Cameron on being South Africa’s first public figure to speak out about living with HIV and his crusade to decriminalize HIV
  • A Malawian mother, known as EL, who was jailed for allegedly breastfeeding another woman’s baby, as told by her lawyer, Wesley Mwafulirwa
  • American Robert Suttle on how a bad breakup led to his imprisonment and registration as a sex offender.