The AIDS Pandemic

The Response Before the Global Response.- The Launch of the Control Program on AIDS.- Creating a Global Response.- Assuming Global Leadership.- Building and Coordinating a Multi-Sectoral Response.- Health, Human Rights, and the GPA.- The Resignation of Jonathan Mann.- The Transition.-Enhancing program delivery.- Containing the global spread of HIV.- Supporting Research.- Addressing Stigma, Discrimination, and Human Rights.- Challenges and Criticisms.- The Challenges of coordination.- Rethinking Global AIDS Governance.- The end of GPA and the launch of UNAIDS.- The Development of UNAIDS.

Michael H. Merson, MD, is the founding director of the Duke Global Health Institute and the Wolfgang Joklik Professor of Global Health at Duke University. He joined the Duke faculty in November 2006. Dr. Merson served as Vice Chancellor for Duke-National University of Singapore (NUS) Affairs from 2010-2016. He was named the Vice President and Vice Provost for Global Affairs at Duke University in June 2011.

Dr. Merson graduated from Amherst College (BA) and the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center. After serving as a medical intern and resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, he worked in the Enteric Diseases Branch at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, GA, and then served as the Chief Epidemiologist at the Cholera Research Laboratory in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His research focused on the etiology and epidemiology of acute diarrheal diseases, including cholera, in developing countries and on the cause of travelers' diarrhea in persons visiting these countries.
In 1978, he joined the World Health Organization (WHO) as a Medical Officer in the Diarrheal Diseases Control Program. He served as Director of that Program from January 1980 until May 1990. In August 1987, he was also appointed Director of the WHO Acute Respiratory Infections Control Program. In May 1990, he was appointed as Director of the WHO Global Program on AIDS. This Program was operational worldwide and responsible for mobilizing and coordinating the global response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
In April 1995, he joined Yale University School of Medicine as its first Dean of Public Health and as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, positions he held until December 2004. In 2001, he was named as the Anna M. R. Lauder Professor of Public Health in the Yale University School of Medicine. From 1999-2006, he also served as Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS at Yale University, which