Chile's HIV epidemic has quietly worsened: about 91,000 people were estimated to be living with the virus at the end of 2024, a figure projected to approach 100,000 during 2026, and a third of new diagnoses arrive late, when infection has already progressed to AIDS. The Universidad de Chile's answer, formalised this April after approval by its University Council in January, is the Centro de Investigación Integral en VIH-SIDA, known as CHAiR, directed by infectious disease specialist Claudia Cortés.
The centre is deliberately cross-faculty, drawing together the Faculties of Medicine, Sciences, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Physical and Mathematical Sciences. Its design rests on three pillars: transdisciplinary research spanning basic virology to clinical studies, training of specialised human capital, and sustained engagement with affected communities. The founding team arrives with form, having already delivered more than 15,000 HIV tests at community operations, run educational workshops in over 100 schools across ten regions, and taken testing to mass events.
The ambitions are regional. CHAiR aims to become a Latin American reference centre, participating in international studies on HIV cure and on the chronic inflammation experienced by patients on long-term treatment, while feeding evidence into national clinical guidelines and public policy. For a university that has historically supplied much of Chile's infectious disease expertise, the centre converts scattered individual efforts into a durable institutional commitment.