The lecture is free to attend and open to all, but registration is required in advance.
Abstract
So much has gone right in the fight against HIV. Decades of steady incremental improvements and international knowledge exchange have benefited people living with HIV worldwide – a testament to translational science and education.
However, throughout the history of HIV and even today in certain parts of the world, the story of the epidemic has been defined by blood, sex and ignorance.
Gareth Tudor-Williams, Professor of Paediatric Infectious Diseases, within the Department of Infectious Disease, has spent 30 years contributing to some of the incremental improvements in the management of children living with HIV, and the prevention of vertical transmission from mothers to their infants. Having begun this professional career mainly offering palliative and terminal care to young infected children, it is gratifying that the cohort at St. Mary’s Hospital is now dominated by young people planning their further education and their future lives. He will use his inaugural to tell the story of three decades of paediatric HIV research including his current work with WHO and UNICEF in NW Sindh Province of Pakistan where over 800 children have been newly diagnosed as HIV infected in the last 3 months.
Biography
Gareth Tudor-Williams is a Professor of Paediatric Infectious Diseases at Imperial College London, and Consultant in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, St. Mary’s Hospital, London.
His interest in paediatric infectious diseases was sparked by two years of working in the Himalayas for Save the Children Fund UK. Gareth has specialised in HIV infection in children since 1989, as a Fellow at Duke University, N. Carolina, and as a Visiting Scientist / Attending Physician at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA from 1991-94.
Since 1994, he has helped run a multi-disciplinary service for HIV infected children, young people and their families at St. Mary’s Hospital, London. He was the founding Chair of the Children’s HIV Association of the UK and Ireland (CHIVA). He has been involved in basic science studies and international Phase II and III trials relating to paediatric blood-borne virus infections for 30 years. At the same time, he has been a passionate undergraduate and postgraduate educator, being granted the IC School of Medicine’s Distinguished Teacher Award in 2017.
