Elton John Honors Dr. Anthony Fauci with Lifetime Achievement Award for His Work on HIV Crisis

Elton John recognized Dr. Anthony Fauci for his work fighting the global HIV crisis on Tuesday — honoring him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

“What a wonderful and fitting way to mark World AIDS Day, by honoring one of the biggest champions in the history of the AIDS epidemic,” John said of Fauci at the US Global Leadership Coalition’s virtual tribute celebration.

Although lately preoccupied with another epidemic, Fauci once served as the National Institutes of Health’s HIV and AIDS coordinator, later becoming the first NIH director of AIDS Research from 1988-1994.

John has also been a longtime advocate for the prevention of HIV, founding the Elton John AIDS Foundation in 1993, which donates to those on the frontlines working to end the epidemic.

“There are very few people on this planet who have dedicated themselves to a lifetime of service to save millions of lives like Dr. Fauci,” said the global music superstar, who founded an eponymous foundation that works to combat HIV/AIDS and its stigma,” John continued.

“His unwavering commitment to public health and innovation has transformed the approach to HIV,” John said. “And it is his leadership and persistence that will ultimately help us overcome the Covid-19 pandemic.”

In a conversation between Fauci and former first daughter Barbara Bush, which was played at Tuesday’s event, the infectious disease specialist remembered, in the early 1980s, having to put “Band-Aids on hemorrhages with no drugs available, watching literally all of my patients die.”

“It’s something that just stuck with me, of how that feels when you have people that you want to save that you can’t,” he said, calling the time “one of the darkest periods of (his) life.”

When asked if he thinks he could see an AIDs-free world in his lifetime, Fauci seemed optimistic but recognized that there was a lot of work that still had to be done.

“When Covid essentially becomes the rearview mirror, HIV is still going to be there,” he said. “And that’s the thing that we have to do. We have to keep our eye on that and never let that — the end game of ending this is, to me, we’re going to get there, and we’re going to get there while I’m still around, I can tell you.”

Watch above, via CNN.