About the Website

Since the early 1980s, AIDS has ravaged the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Nearly 30 million people have died. But over the past few years, aquiet global revolution has enabled millions of people infected by HIV to live healthy lives.

In the early 1990s, when antiretroviral drugs became available, AIDS was transformed from a certain death sentence to a manageable chronic disease–but only for some. The expense of the drugs and their distribution prevented 95 percent of those living with HIV from getting access to them. International outrage that millions were dying because of economic disparity helped reduce drug prices and to create the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in 2002.

In Access to Life, eight Magnum photographers portray thirty people in nine countries around the world before and four months after they began antiretroviral treatment for AIDS. The website features the faces, voices and stories representing those millions of people who by now would be dead if not for access to free antiretroviral drugs–people who are living with HIV, working, caring for children, and experiencing the joys and struggles of being alive.  To view the work, visit: http://www.theglobalfund.org/html/accesstolife/en/