Dr. John Nkengasong

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208 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 9 Jul

Dr. John Nkengasong’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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None.

We can treat it, but you just cannot cure it.

So that became a problem that I thought at that age that I wanted to be part of.

I started working on hepatitis B at a medical school.

And then I had a scholarship to go to Belgium at the Institute of Tropical Medicine after just one year and started my HIV career in 1988.

That's how I joined HIV, yes.

So I had spent like 10 years at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Belgium and actually became the chief of the virology lab at the age of 33.

And this is an African who had come in there, studied, did a postdoc and earned the confidence in Antwerp of all.

I mean, a very conservative city.

And so, yeah, I was very young and I wanted to go back to Africa.

I just wanted to, I was in dire need to go back to Africa.

Why?

Because I thought the need was there because I was based in Belgium, but my work was mainly in the DRC and Cameroon, Gabon, Kenya.

So remember, this is the peak of HIV.

OK, and this was the 90s.

I mean, where you walk down the streets of Nairobi or Entebbe, you saw people with sunken jaws.

You didn't need a lab test to know that this was an HIV patient or young people there.

When I visited Uganda for the first time from the airport in Entebbe to Kampala, you saw nothing but coffins.

The thriving business there was coffins.

You drive like two hours, you saw nothing but a coffin.

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