Former Director of UNAIDS Dr Peter Piot, MD PhD joins HCI’s Honorary Advisory Board

24-04-2009

Health Connections International (HCI) is delighted to announce that former Executive Director of the Jointed United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and Under Secretary-General of the United Nations Dr Peter Piot has joined its Honorary Advisory Board. Currently serving as Director of the Institute for Global Health at Imperial College London, in joining HCI as an Honorary Advisor Dr Piot has demonstrated his support of our efforts in strengthening healthcare systems and the need to combine the innovative use of technology with traditional development aid approaches in the responses to HIV, TB and drug treatment issues globally.

According to Dr Piot, `the AIDS epidemic itself has overburdened healthcare systems, and we must meet the challenge of overcoming the formidable barrier of creating sufficient operational capacity. Information and communications technologies have the potential to deliver new and creative solutions for health systems strengthening, and can enhance the ways in which HIV prevention, treatment and care as well as the overall policy, institutional mechanisms and socio-economic dimensions are addressed’.

From 1995 through 2008, Dr Piot served as the Executive Director of UNAIDS, and has been instrumental in helping to build a global coalition to respond to the AIDS epidemic, placing it firmly on international agendas and in discussions. He successfully brought together UN agencies and international development aid agencies, foundations, civil society, and business and political leaders to jointly address HIV and AIDS-related issues on a global scale. In spring 2009, Dr Piot took up the post of Director of the Institute for Global Health.

HCI is pleased to welcome Dr Piot to its Honorary Advisory Board and looks forward to working with him.