World AIDS Day: UCL work in Asia, Africa and London

On World AIDS Day , UCL staff and students are strengthening the fight against the epidemic and tackling its effects around the world. Twenty years after the HIV virus and AIDS first entered the public consciousness, 33.4 million people are living with HIV worldwide, 85,000 of whom are in the UK. The effects of the pandemic beyond healthcare are legion, including social, political and economical ramifications, and differ from country to country. UCL's multidisciplinary expertise allows us to bring our intellectual strengths to bear on all these facets of HIV and AIDS, through the UCL Institute for Global Health , as well as research across the social sciences and humanities. Below is a small selection of the different work UCL is doing to tackle and raise awareness of the pandemic in different parts of the world. The story of HIV in South-East Asia. Henry Stephens, Honorary Senior Lecturer at UCL Medicine and Consultance Clinical Scientist at the Royal Free Hospital, describes a controversial vaccine success in South-East Asia, the unique way the virus has developed in the region, and the impact of AIDS on Thai society.