Congratulations to Dr. Stanley Read on receiving the 2020 University of Alberta Distinguished Alumni Award

Stanley E. Read, ’65 MD
Stanley E. Read joined the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto in 1980, having completed a PhD in Montreal and postgraduate training in New York. At that time, unusual infections were being observed among gay men in San Francisco, later to be recognized as HIV/AIDS. Read was also seeing it in Toronto and, with his collaborators, carried out the first study of the natural history of HIV infection. In 1987, he saw his first HIV-infected child and that became his focus as a pediatric HIV specialist, conducting research into the prevention of transmission of HIV from mother to baby. In 1988, he established the hospital’s HIV/AIDS family-centred care program. Read was also active in providing compassionate care to the wider AIDS community: he treated adult patients at a Toronto clinic, was a founding board member of Canada’s first AIDS hospice, and for many years chaired the scientific advisory committee for the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research. Read also touched lives in Russia, Ukraine and the Caribbean with his work on AIDS testing and prevention, disease treatment and teaching health-care providers to care with compassion. In the Bahamas, Read’s work helped reduce mother-to-child HIV transmission from a rate of 30 per cent in 1992 to near zero by 2004. A global health leader, Read is working to create an AIDS-free generation.