Our Condolences to All Affected by Flight MH17

CGD and its health team express our condolences to the families of all lost on MH17. We know that many of those attending the International AIDS Conference, which starts this week-end in Melbourne, have been touched personally by the AIDS researchers and activists lost on the plane and will deeply feel their loss. Dr. Joep Lange in particular has been a force for expanding treatment access for decades. The loss of Dr. Lange and the others on the way to the conference echoes the loss in 1998 of Jonathan Mann, the first director of the agency that has become UNAIDS, and other AIDS researchers who were traveling on SwissAir 111 to an AIDS meeting in Geneva. Those of us who knew Jonathan Mann or other passengers on SwissAir 111 will feel that pain anew as we absorb this new tragedy.