Written by: Kent Klindera, Director of amfAR’s MSM Initiative
As one of the only funders solely supporting grassroots efforts to reducing HIV vulnerabilities amongst gay men, other men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender individuals in the Global South, I take extreme pride is writing this perspective on building the HIVe. Clearly, gay men, other MSM and transgender individuals have been forgotten in both generalised HIV epidemics and more population specific epidemics, an unfounded scenario that is rooted in stigma and discrimination. As it was in the beginning of the HIV epidemic in the Global North, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) leaders in the Global South have recognised the need to organise on their own to save the lives of their brothers and sisters whom governments and more mainstream civil society colleagues have neglected.