Chloe Orkin
Chloe Meave Orkin is a British physician and Professor of HIV/AIDS medicine at Queen Mary University of London. She works as a consultant at the Royal London Hospital, Barts Health NHS Trust. She is an internationally renowned expert in HIV therapeutics and led the first phase III clinical trial of injectable anti-retrovirals. She is immediate past chair of the British HIV Association, where she championed the Undetectable=Untransmittable campaign within the United Kingdom. She is president elect of the Medical Women's Federation. Orkin is gay and was on the Top 100 Lesbian influencer lists in both the UK and in the US in 2020. She considers herself a medical activist and much of her work focuses on inequalities in healthcare and in Medicine.
Early life and education
Orkin was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. She obtained her medical degree in 1995 from the University of the Witwatersrand and was the prize student in virology and microbiology. She began her clinical training at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto in the 1990s. At the time, between 30 and 40% of medical inpatients were infected with HIV and Orkin herself, lost close friends to AIDS. She moved to the United Kingdom. In 1998, she completed her specialist training in HIV and Genitourinary Medicine at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Towards the end of her specialist training, Orkin moved to Botswana together with nurse colleague and partner Flick Thorley to establish an HIV/AIDS treatment programme in Francistown as part of the government anti-retroviral roll-out. In 2006, Orkin completed a MSc in Infectious Diseases from The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.Research and career
At the age of 29, Orkin was appointed as consultant physician at Barts Health NHS Trust. Her specialist interests are the development of novel antiretroviral therapies, blood-borne virus testing and health inequalities. In 2013, she led the Test Me East HIV testing campaign which was supported by David Furnish, Sir Elton John and Sadie Frost and covered by CNN, Channel 4 and ITV news. In 2015, she spearheaded 'In 2018, Orkin and the British HIV Association announced their commitment to the Undetectable=Untransmittable campaign.
During the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, she led on safe delivery of COVID-19 treatment trials at the 5 Barts Health NHS Trust hospitals including NHS Nightingale London. Since then she has led the team that created a new clinical trial centre in a community library to deliver a large SARS CoV2 vaccine trials and was appointed as its clinical director. She has also led research into poor health outcomes in ethnically diverse people and on gender disparities in women's academic careers. She is lead investigator for the first COVID-19 vaccine trial in pregnant women.
Selected publications
HIV Anti-retroviral Therapy:COVID-19 Equality Research:
Blood-borne Virus Testing in UK Emergency Department: