WHO WE ARE:
OUR HISTORY
Since 1996 we have provided HIV treatment, education, and prevention to those who need it most, fighting stigma, discrimination, and the inequalities that put lives at risk.
In the early 1980s, HIV emerged as a devastating epidemic, marked by stigma, exclusion, and deep inequalities in access to healthcare.
Although scientific advances transformed HIV into a chronic health condition in developed countries, millions of people in the global south still had no access to life-saving medications.
From that gap — between medical progress and inequity — AID FOR AIDS was born.
At St. Vincent's Hospital in New York, HIV counselor Jesús Aguais noticed patients discarding unused antiretrovirals and started saving them in a desk drawer. When a woman arrived from Venezuela desperate to find treatment for her family, those medications were exactly what they needed — and couldn't access back home. That encounter became the beginning of a program that would go on to save thousands of lives.
In 2005, AFA launched the Latino Observatory — a regional platform that allowed community organizations, people living with HIV, and civil society networks to monitor HIV programs, flag gaps, and push for policy change. That same year, the AID FOR AIDS Gala was born, bringing together scientists, activists, artists, and allies in support of the global HIV response. Both became pillars of AFA's identity beyond direct service.
the comprehensive care program for Children and Adolescents (NNA) is launched — one of AFA's first specialized responses, recognizing the differential impact of HIV on childhood and adolescence. This model was later strengthened and expanded to the Dominican Republic and Panama.
AFA deepens its understanding of HIV as a phenomenon linked to poverty, inequality, violence, and social exclusion. This comprehensive perspective lays the groundwork for broader institutional expansion.
As Venezuela's health system collapsed, AFA mobilized one of the largest humanitarian responses in its history. With support from ViiV Healthcare, Gilead Sciences, and Mylan Pharmaceuticals, AFA shipped 1 ton of antibiotics in 2017 — enough to treat 70,000 people. In 2018, that response scaled to 25 containers carrying 69 tons of medication: treatment for 35,000 people with HIV and medicines for nearly half a million people with malaria, reaching communities across the country.
While distributing medication across Venezuela, AFA encountered something the shipments couldn't solve: Thousands of HIV-positive mothers (not receiving treatment) had no way to safely breastfeed their newborns — and no formula to replace it. AFA began procuring infant formula and launched the campaign 'Healing Venezuela', eventually reaching nearly 4,000 babies in 21 cities of 17 states, across 28 health centers in Venezuela. Knowing that malnutrition in the first year of life can cause permanent brain damage and death, this wasn't a detour from AFA's mission, it was an expansion of it.
Healing Venezuela made it undeniable: vulnerable communities needed support that went far beyond HIV. In 2019, AID FOR LIFE (AFL) was founded in New York as AFA's sister organization — created to formally expand that commitment to populations facing malnutrition, chronic illness, and social exclusion. It was a direct response to what AFA had witnessed on the ground in Venezuela, and a recognition that saving lives sometimes means following the need wherever it leads.
Still Here. Still Fighting.
What started with a drawer full of unused medications in a New York hospital has grown into a regional organization operating across Latin America and the Caribbean, serving migrants, indigenous communities, children, and everyone the system has left behind.
AID FOR AIDS and AID FOR LIFE don’t see HIV, malnutrition, migration, or poverty as separate problems. They never have. The work has always followed the people, and the people led us here.