What Happens When A Pandemic And An Epidemic Collide

Anton Besenko is worried. He fears all the hard-won progress made in fighting the AIDS epidemic is on a collision course with the urgent needs of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"For people with HIV, it's double, triple the crisis since the start of the lockdown," says the Ukrainian AIDS advocate. "I have a bad feeling that organizations and governments are so concentrated on COVID that they are completely forgetting about HIV. For marginalized people, it's a question of life and death."

Besenko is no stranger to health crises. After years of injection drug use, he contracted HIV (which he now lives with) and hepatitis C (he's now cured). He got clean in 2004.

Today, he works for the International HIV/AIDS Alliance Ukraine as a coordinator for harm reduction programs that help IV drug users get clean needles or