President Joe Biden thanked a crowd of HIV/AIDS treatment advocates and community members on the South Lawn of the White House on Sunday for “the honor of our lives to serve in the White House, the people’s house, your house.” 

“We felt a special obligation to use this sacred place to ensure everyone is seen and the story of America is heard,” the president continued. “That’s why we’re all together here at this World AIDS Day.”

The president and first lady gave their remarks at a White House commemoration of World AIDS Day. They were joined by activist Jeanne White-Ginder. Panels of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt were on display on the lawn behind them as they spoke to guests.

A team of volunteers worked in the morning to assemble the panels in preparation for public viewing. One of the volunteers, Jerry Suarez, told the Blade that he had lost both his brother and father to the epidemic.

“I came here to bring my dad and brother here,” Suarez told the Blade as he motioned toward the panels on the quilt. 

“I couldn’t be prouder of the work the NAMES Project has done in taking care of my father and taking care of my brother,” continued Suarez. “I feel like this is the moment we’ve always wanted — we wanted for the longest time to have a sitting president to actually even notice us, and in ’96 when the Clintons came to the display, that was the first time . . . but we never could quite get in the door on the other side of the fence.”

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is overseen by the National AIDS Memorial. Sections of the quilt have been displayed throughout the world. According to the National AIDS Memorial, the last display of the entire AIDS Memorial Quilt was in October of 1996 when it covered the National Mall. The quilt is considered the world’s largest community folk art piece, with nearly 50,000 panels representing more than 100,000 names.

This marks the first time that panels of the quilt have been displayed on the South Lawn of the White House. President Barack Obama displayed a section of the quilt in the East Wing of the White House in 2012.

“As I look at this beautiful quilt, with its bright colors, the names in big block letters, renderings of lives and loves, I see it as a mom,” Jill Biden said. “And I think of the mothers who stitched their pain into a patchwork panel so that the world would remember their child. Not as a victim of a vicious disease, but as a son who had played in a high school jazz band, as a child who proudly grew up to serve our nation in uniform, as the daughter whose favorite holiday was Christmas.”

“Jeanne,” the first lady turned to White-Ginder. “I know you didn’t choose the life of an activist, but when Ryan got sick 40 years ago, you stepped up in the fight against discrimination and helped the world see this disease more clearly.”

White-Ginder is the mother of Ryan White, for whom the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP) is named. RWHAP is the largest federal program focused on HIV, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration.

White-Ginder said, “In 1990 . . . shortly after Ryan died, Sen. [Ted] Kennedy asked me if I would come to Washington to explain to senators how vital it was to pass the AIDS bill, which had been recently named after my son, called the Ryan White CARE Act. He said that I was something much more powerful than a lobbyist: I was a mother.”

“The first senator I met getting off the elevator at the Capitol was Sen. Joe Biden,” White-Ginder continued. “With tears in his eyes, he told me that he had lost his child, and that the only way that he had found to deal with . . . the grief was through a purpose.”

White-Ginder said, “In many ways, personal grief has fueled the AIDS movement since the beginning. Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have supported Ryan’s bill, and as a result, countless lives have been saved.”

President Biden thanked retiring associate administrator for HIV/AIDS Bureau Health Resources and Services Administration Dr. Laura Cheever, as well as former chief medical adviser to the president Anthony Fauci, and the recently deceased A. Cornelius Baker for their contributions to the fight against HIV/AIDS.

President Biden lauded the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), launched by George W. Bush, as the “single largest investment of any nation in the world to take on a single disease, saving more than 26 million lives so far.”

As a senator, Biden helped lead the bipartisan effort to authorize PEPFAR in 2003. Biden reauthorized PEPFAR last year and announced on Sunday’s World AIDS Day commemoration that he is “going to call on Congress to pass a five year PEPFAR reauthorization to sustain these gains made globally.”

The president promoted his administration’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy and discussed access to treatment and prevention as well as fighting stigma and discrimination.

Finally, the president announced that before the end of his term, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will update its guidance on HIV care, “encouraging states to adopt the best practices using the latest science and technology.”

Guests were invited to view the display of panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt on the South Lawn of the White House at the end of the program.

[See photos from the event here.]

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the U.S. Agency for International Development on Sunday marked World AIDS Day.

Blinken in his statement echoed the Biden-Harris administration’s call “for collective action with partners around the world to sustain and accelerate the great progress we have made toward ending HIV/AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.”

“Over the past four years, the State Department has worked tirelessly to save lives through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR),” the statement reads. “In partnership with foreign governments, PEPFAR has changed the trajectory of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and now supports more than 20 million people on lifesaving treatment across 55 countries around the world. Independent analyses have documented a direct link of this lifesaving work to economic growth across PEPFAR partner countries. Bipartisan action on a clean, five-year reauthorization of PEPFAR is essential to ending HIV/AIDS as a public health threat and to implementing the program’s plans to sustain success over the long term through partner country and community-led and managed programs.”

Blinken further stressed World AIDS Day “is a day to remember the more than 42 million lives lost to HIV/AIDS — a stark reminder of the threat this virus continues to pose if we do not ensure that partner countries have the vision and capacity to sustain a bold response.”

“We must continue to chart a course together that will help communities stay safe and prosperous by ending HIV/AIDS as a public health threat,” he said.

USAID spokesperson Benjamin Suarato in a statement echoed Blinken.

“Each year, we observe World AIDS Day to honor people living with and affected by HIV, remember those we have lost, and recommit to ending HIV as a public health threat by 2030,” said Suarato. “For decades, USAID has worked to support those affected by HIV, as well as the health workers, scientists, researchers, advocates, and communities dedicated to the HIV response.”

Suarato noted this year’s World AIDS Day’s theme, “Collective Action: Sustain and Accelerate HIV Progress,” “underscores the long-term leadership of the United States to galvanize global solidarity and make critical investments to reduce HIV transmission, improve access to treatment, and advance transformative partnerships to sustain a locally-led HIV response.” Suarato also highlighted PEPFAR has saved “more than 25 million lives and helped more than 5.5 million babies to be born HIV-free across 55 countries.”

“We recognize that ending HIV as a public health threat requires enduring cooperation with partner country governments, civil society, faith-based, and other non-governmental organizations, researchers, and scientists,” said Suarato. “It also requires us to continue to elevate the leadership of communities and individuals living with and affected by HIV. On this World AIDS Day, USAID reaffirms our dedication to collective action.”

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden on Sunday will commemorate World AIDS Day at the White House. AIDS Memorial Quilt panels will be shown on the White House’s South Lawn for the first time.

The Washington Blade will have further coverage of the White House commemoration.

A new rule announced Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will allow HIV positive patients to receive organs from HIV positive donors, a move that will expand the pool of available organs and reduce wait times.

“This rule removes unnecessary barriers to kidney and liver transplants, expanding the organ donor pool and improving outcomes for transplant recipients with HIV,” said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra in a statement.

The agency noted that the final rule also aims to combat stigma and health inequities associated with HIV.

“Research shows that kidney and liver transplants between donors and recipients with HIV can be performed safely and effectively,” Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine added. “This policy change reflects our commitment to following the evidence and updating our approaches as we learn more. By removing research requirements where they are no longer needed, we can help more people with HIV access life-saving transplants.”

HHS notes that the rule applies to kidney and liver transplants, which correspond with the areas in which the evidence from biomedical research is the most “robust.”