Keynote: Pradeep Kakkattil

Keynote Speaker: Pradeep Kakkatil, Director of Innovation, UNAIDS; Founder, UNAIDS Health Innovation Exchange (HIEx)

Interviewed by Andrew Nerlinger, Co-founder, PandemicTech

Pradeep Kakkattil started his career in India as a print and television journalist and filmmaker. He gave up his media career when a close friend tested positive for HIV in the early 1990s and started to respond to the potential threat of HIV to people of his generation. He became a principal investigator for the World Health Organization Global Programme on AIDS on the sex industry in south India, based in Chennai, and helped to establish networks of community organizations of female sex workers, men who have sex with men and transgender people. He later moved to Delhi to help design and expand prevention programmes and managed the partnerships for sexual health portfolio as a staff member of the India office of the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development from 1996 to 1999.

Mr Kakkattil joined UNAIDS in India in 1999 and has since worked in various capacities. He served as the Deputy Director of the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Asia and the Pacific between 2012 and 2015 and served as a senior adviser to the UNAIDS Executive Director between 2015 and 2017. In that capacity, he coordinated the United Nations High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS in 2016.

Organizing Partner: UNAIDS Health Innovation Exchange

The UNAIDS Health Innovation Exchange (HIEx) is a vibrant and neutral facilitator that brings together innovative solutions for health, particularly in the global South. As a multilayered platform, it connects countries and systems, identifies their health-specific priorities or challenges, and works to ensure that investments are channeled to support high-potential innovations for health that help countries move towards impact for the SDGs.Launched by UNAIDS in Geneva, Switzerland in May 2019, the HIEx as a global entity also advocates for indigenous solutions, local production and multi-sectoral partnerships with communities.Founded on a shared commitment that no one is left behind in the journey towards the SDGs, the HIEx forges a community of political leaders, decision makers, health experts, technology and science leaders, innovators, investors, accelerators and implementers and all those who can share, explore and synergize efforts for sustainable impact.