Dr. William Heyward Battles HIV/AIDS

Dr. William Heyward was born in the beautiful city of Atlanta, Georgia, in 1950. He attended Emory University, earning a bachelors of arts in Chemistry before moving on to the Medical College of Georgia to receive his MD. He then completed his internship and his residency in Internal Medicine before joining the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the CDC. It was with the CDC that Dr. Heyward would do some of his greatest and most important work.

Working With the CDC

Dr. Heyward’s first post found him living in Anchorage, Alaska. He was sent there in order to study the infections and diseases that were plaguing the Alaskan natives. Disease such as hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type b, pneumococcal disease, and liver cancer. Dr. Heyward helped the Alaskan people to overcome hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenzae type b, as well as helping to start a program that recognizes the genetic marker for liver cancer so that those with the marker can get treated early on in the disease.

Dr. Heyward’s next task was to learn more about how HIV and AIDS was affecting Alaskan natives. He was the first doctor to survey the area to learn how far the disease had spread in the remote land. He became enamored with helping to eradicate the disease and went back to college in order to learn more about it. He attended Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health and received an M.P.H. in Epidemiology in 1987.

Getting Involved with AIDS

After Dr. William Heyward received his M.P.H., he returned to working with the CDC and immediately helped to create an International AIDS Program. With this program, Dr. Heyward was able to travel to a number of far away places in order to see how the HIV/AIDS virus had affected the local culture. He traveled to Brazil, Honduras, the Ivory Coast, and Thailand to mention a few. While he was in the Ivory Coast and Thailand, he helped to set up field stations in order to continue the study of how AIDS was affecting the natives there.

He briefly held the position of the Director of Project SIDA in Zaire, but was forced to leave the country due to a revolt. He went back to Atlanta and began working with the HIV Vaccine Unit in order to help discover a vaccine to stop the HIV virus. He began trials in Rwanda, Thailand, Brazil and Uganda. His goal was, and still is, to find a cure for the virus that plagues every nation.

He retired from the CDC in 2000 and immediately became the vice president for International Clinical Research with VaxGen, the maker of the HIV vaccine. This move caused a lot of controversy, but Dr. Heyward pushed it aside and focused on doing what he has always done: curing infectious diseases. He left VaxGen in 2004 and began working with the Clinical Research Organization in a continued effort to prevent HIV infection from dominating the world.