Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar was a junior doctor in London when the global AIDS epidemic broke out. Forty years later, his memory is of the human suffering, the deaths in the gay community, and the inability of science to provide an answer. Today, the Director of the Wellcome Trust says challenges remain, and describes AIDS as the first zoonotic epidemic of the 20th century. He speaks with James Chau, Host of The China Current.

Forty years of AIDS is a landmark in human history. The global response has advanced science and galvanized communities in transformative ways. But people living with HIV continue to be shunned and rejected — which creates barriers to the treatment they need. In the 1980s, Dr. Margaret Chan was working in Hong Kong where she saw first-hand how this impacted one schoolboy and his family. She stepped in to help him. Decades later, that experience has not left her. She speaks with James Chau, Host of The China Current.

Jingdezhen, an eastern Chinese city, is the center of China’s ceramics culture, and has driven the export of “fine china” to the world. Artist and studio owner Amber Lei shares the history of how ceramics came to be so celebrated in China and beyond with our Host James Chau.