Jorge Saavedra López, Executive Director of the AHF Global Public Health Institute, gave a deeply symbolic speech during the tenth anniversary of the Condesa Iztapalapa Specialized Clinic (CECI), held on November 28. He shared personal, historical, and political reflections on the HIV response in Mexico City and the country.
From the start, the specialist emphasized his emotional connection to “Ceci” (as the institution's staff colloquially calls it), which he refers to as “my granddaughter,” recalling his role in creating the first Condesa Clinic in the Condesa neighborhood and later in Iztapalapa.
He explained that, as was said at the time, people could live for up to ten years without treatment; and indeed, in 1995—exactly a decade later—he reached a critical state, lost about 40 kilograms, and was hospitalized.
He noted that with these conditions, there are real possibilities for the city to become the first in Latin America capable of controlling the epidemic by 2030, provided that political will, diagnostic capacity, sustained prevention, and access to treatment are maintained—factors that, as he insisted, determine both survival and the interruption of new transmissions.
He also recognized the technical support of CENSIDA as an essential piece for advancing the epidemiological control goal.
He underscored that his own life is testimony to this change: “I have been living with this for 40 years.”
The specialist revisited the institutional trajectory by highlighting the birth of the Condesa Clinic in 2000 and the celebration of its first decade in 2010, an occasion on which he and his husband even used the space to get married, which he described as having profound personal symbolism.
His recovery was thanks to the arrival of the first antiretroviral treatments; access was not universal and generated what was known at the time as the “Lazarus syndrome,” by allowing people on the brink of death to survive.
Now, with the ten years of CECI, he reiterated that he could not miss the celebration and recognized the affection that the staff themselves have placed in the name “La Ceci,” reflecting a sense of belonging and community appropriation.
Faced with the contemporary landscape, Dr. Saavedra stressed the importance of Mexico City having an institutional architecture that includes CECI, the Condesa Specialized Clinic, the City Government led by Clara Brugada, the capital's Health Secretariat headed by Nadine Gasman Zylbermann, and national backing from the Mexican Presidency.
He concluded by congratulating the doctor, as well as Nadine Gasman and Eduardo Rodríguez Nolasco, Director of the HIV/AIDS Program of CDMX, and reiterated his wish for CECI to continue consolidating itself as a national example.
In a symbolic gesture, he presented Dr. Alexandra Domínguez, director of CECI, a gift from AHF: stethoscopes and sphygmomanometers for the clinical staff.
