TEN Conversations for Health

We are delighted and proud to launch this book of ten conversations to end AIDS. We need to talk about HIV as politicians in meetings, but more importantly to our people, in real villages.

Dr. Parirenyatwa, Minister of Health, Zimbabwe

This is good poetry and good public health. In my experience, we need drugs, prevention and personal engagement to have these difficult but important conversations, to help end AIDS. Read these poems, and then have the conversations.

Professor Olive Shisana, Co-chair of the 21st International AIDS Conference

This is poignant and powerful poetry and HIV prevention. What are condoms? 40% rubber and 60% conversations and behaviours. We need tools and conversations like these for prevention to have the decisive impact we know it can have.

Rachel Baggaley, Coordinator, Key Populations and Innovative Prevention, HIV Department of the World Health Organization

Prevention tools and medicines are critical to ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030, but they will not be enough on their own. We still need to learn to talk to each other more freely about HIV. The poems in this book are a fun, engaging but serious contribution to stimulating conversations about HIV and ending AIDS. Read them yourself and then read them to ten other people.

Michel Sidibe, Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)

These poems are beautiful, powerful, and accessible. Community conversations offer an empowering platform for people affected by HIV to engage with allies in government and civil society on the issues that matter most to them. In doing so, opinions are changed and action is taken. I am proud of Daniel Low-Beer and Albert Nyathi’s creative new work.

Minister Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (Minister of Foreign Affairs, and former Minister of Health, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia)

This lovely book of poems reminds us we have a ‘social vaccine’ to fight HIV – conversations that can spread faster than the virus to fight stigma. Conversations that spread love and hope. As we return to Durban for the International AIDS Conference, it is important we remember and repeat the anthem: ‘Break the Silence’.

Mark Dybul, Executive Director of the Global Fund

Eastern and southern Africa region is driving the agenda to reinvigorate HIV prevention in a powerful and practical way. These are lovely and readable poems, to get us to have ten key public and personal conversations to end AIDS.

Professor Sheila Tlou, Former Minister of Health Botswana, UNAIDS Regional Director East and Southern Africa