Where you live should not determine whether you live.

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the first reported cases of AIDS. I remember the first person I saw succumb to the disease. I want to honor her.

It was October 2006. She’d had symptoms for years. We’d just started testing people for HIV in a town in Liberia’s rainforest. She was the first patient I diagnosed. She asked if anything could be done to prolong her life. While anti-retroviral medicines had become available years earlier in the capital, treatment had not been expanded to rural Liberia. Over a few months her condition deteriorated. Her body wasted away, day by day. She grew weaker. She couldn’t stand. Then she couldn’t sit. I suspected she had developed tuberculosis. Eventually she lost consciousness and fell into a coma.

It was after midnight when she died. As daylight broke, I heard piercing screams of intolerable mourning as her sister and daughter cried hysterically, collapsed on the ground from their grief outside the health center where she had just perished. I’ll never forget that sound.

Over the last four decades, more than 32 million people with HIV/AIDS like her have suffered and died. Their siblings, their children, their parents and those they loved have been left only with their memories and holes in their hearts.

Today, over 38 million people live with HIV. Many receive the care they need. Too many still don’t. We must recommit to bring treatment and care within reach of every single one of them — including those in rural areas. Where you live should not determine whether you live.