Yana Panfilova is the Founder of Teenergizer, an AHF Partnership Fund recipient. Her story is next in our “I Am AHF” series featuring remarkable staff, clients, and partners who are doing what’s right to save lives every day.
Interviewed by Diana Shpak, Knowledge Management Focal Point, AHF Europe.
Yana Panfilova was born with HIV, which she acquired from her mother. For the first 10 years of her life, she received no treatment and became seriously ill. Only then did she start the therapy that saved her life. At 16, she stood before officials in Moldova and said it out loud for the first time – AIDS is not over. The country had just cut funding for programs supporting children living with HIV, and after hearing her story, they restored it.
That day, Yana learned what one honest voice can do.
Growing up in Kyiv, Ukraine, children like Yana received pills, but not support. No one talked about carrying a diagnosis at school, at home, in a first relationship. Some of her friends quietly stopped their treatment. When you stop, you feel fine. Until, months later, you do not. Some of them died.
She gathered friends from her support group and founded Teenergizer, a movement built by teenagers, for teenagers. By 18, she was negotiating with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and helped secure $1 million for youth programs. And she saw the gap: adults designing programs for young people without asking them, without sex education, without meeting their real needs.
In 2018, an idea hit her: peer-to-peer counseling. Nobody was talking about mental health. People stop treatment because of it. People get infected, even when they know the risks, because of it.
Teenergizer connected psychology and social work students, who needed real experience, with young people anywhere, including Kyiv, Dnipro and small villages.
Before the full-scale war, there were 500 consultations. During the war, there have been 9,000. Today, the total sits at more than 160,000. The need was always there. No one believed young people could meet it, simply and cheaply. But they did.
With support from the AHF Partnership Fund, the organization helps young people maintain access to essential HIV care and services. Teenergizer also collaborated with Ukrainian influencers and Richard Gere to combat stigma, encourage HIV testing, and raise awareness of the rights of young people living with HIV.
A voice for 38 million
In 2021, Yana opened the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS on behalf of the 38 million people living with HIV at the time. Her message: “young people are always left out, but they are tomorrow’s key populations. Work on the causes, not the consequences.”
At home, her team sent teenagers into clinics as “secret clients” to expose legal barriers to testing. Then they spent two years advocating against a law to remove those barriers, until a far-right attack, online and physical, derailed it. Two days before the invasion, she sat with Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska, and ministers, insisting mental health could not wait.
HIV is not over
Now Yana warns the world is relaxing too soon. Money is moving away from health.
“People think HIV is over,” she says. “It is absolutely not over.”
She could walk away to a law firm tomorrow. She stays, because in a crisis, experience is the one thing we cannot afford to lose.
Talk openly about HIV. Get tested. Support youth-led, peer-led services. And whenever decisions are made about young people, make sure young people are in the room.
People like Yana are living reminders of why we must never allow the world to forget about HIV. Their courage challenges all of us to do more, to care more deeply, and to keep knocking on every door that needs to be opened.
Because behind every door is a human life. The fight against HIV is not over. And if there are people who need support, protection, and a voice, our responsibility is not over either.
We may not all stand before world leaders, but every one of us has the power to make a difference. Sometimes, all it takes is the courage to speak, the compassion to listen, and the determination to never stop caring.
