HIV Heroes, a photography exhibition by Nell Freeman to commemorate the 20th Anniversary of World Aids Day on 1 December 2008, is being launched at Canary Wharf this week.

The exhibition in the lobby of One Canada Square tells the stories of individuals across Africa that have cared for those affected by AIDS and are helping to end the spread of the disease, which has orphaned 12 million children in sub-Saharan Africa. Twenty-two million people are currently living with HIV or Aids in the region.

Nell Freeman has spent the past 30 months in Africa meeting and photographing these largely unknown leaders of change:

“They are true heroes and deserve our celebration,” she says.

“Thanks to the work of almost entirely unrecognised individuals, HIV/AIDS is no longer the automatic death sentence that it formerly represented to many Africans. The number of people dying from AIDS is falling. The number of new HIV infections across Africa is stable or falling.”

The exhibition captures stories like that of Helvina Phiri, a teacher at Chiwoko Basic School in rural Zambia, who says ”as educators we felt it had become necessary to teach our students about HIV - as necessary as mathematics.”

In Madagascar, sex workers led by Patricia, their co-operative president, refused to rent rooms unless the hotel manager provided condom disposal bins. The AngloGold Ashanti Goldmine in Geita, Tanzania has made HIV prevention, testing and care available not only to all of its miners, but also to the local community.

Freeman says “these stories are evidence that the 6,800 new infections per day can be lowered and that anti-retrovirals can be effectively distributed across Africa. Meeting this need would stop AIDS being sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest killer.

“In the past 20 years the image of and response to AIDS has changed beyond recognition. While many of these changes are positive, this anniversary offers an opportunity to highlight how much more still needs to be done.”