December 1 marks World AIDS Day. This month we feature the voices of GAIA trustees and staff sharing their thoughts on the 30th anniversary of AIDS. Below you will find a piece from GAIA Trustee Dr. Etta Eskridge, and on the sidebars you will find links to GAIA Trustee Dr.Michael Gottlieb’s op-ed published in London’s Financial Times, and his interview with Michael Krasny on KQED’s Forum. Co-Founder and President Emeritus Dr. William Rankin‘s op-ed in the Marin Independent Journal, as well as my piece published today on CNN.com. International Program’s Director Dr. Ellen Schell’s piece is featured here.
Todd Schafer
GAIA CEO
Thirty years ago, a single patient threw a monkey wrench into my plans for a career in academic medicine. He was 31 years old, homosexual, rail-thin, with platinum-dyed close-cropped hair, and a previously unknown immune deficiency. When I reported his case and four others to the Centers for Disease Control I had no idea that the moment represented the beginning of an historic global HIV pandemic that over the next thirty years would ravage millions of lives.
In July 1982, we arrived at the birthplace of AIDS – Congo – before the disease had a name. Before the year was out, rumors were spreading in the countryside of a lethal sexually-transmitted disease, and by April the cover of Newsweek magazine (our only regular connection to the outside world) screamed “EPIDEMIC: The Mysterious and Deadly Disease Called AIDS may be the Public Health Threat of the Century” and included the “African Genesis” theory tracing AIDS’ roots to equatorial Africa.
Read the full op-ed by Todd Schafer and Michael Hanlon here.
World AIDS Day
World AIDS Day is December 1st. This year we mark the 30th anniversary of the first documented case of AIDS in the US, in June 1981. I graduated from college that year and was about to embark on my adult life. HIV/AIDS has been a part of my life from that time onwards.
Although I lived in the Bronx and studied as a graduate student at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, I did not become fully aware of the impact of the disease until one of my fellow graduate students died of the illness in 1985. This came as a complete shock to most of us at the time: he had been young and apparently healthy; his partner was a student in my department. I felt helpless but continued on with my life, leaving for Princeton University to do post-doctoral work in Molecular Biology. In 1990 I decided to return to Einstein to become a medical student, completing my residency training at Montefiore Medical Center in 1998.
As an intern in the 1990′s I cared for many young men and women dying of AIDS. Their deaths were painful and as doctors caring for them we became well versed in the management of many opportunistic infections. As AIDS entered its 15th year in the US, Crixivan was introduced to combat HIV and the number of terminally ill AIDS patients in the hospital decreased dramatically. It seemed we had made the important leap of turning AIDS from a death sentence into a chronic disease requiring lifelong therapy.
In 2002 I became aware of the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. I heard a sermon given by a man who had started an organization in San Francisco to help prevent the transmission of HIV from pregnant women to their babies at delivery. I realized that the wonderful advances we had made in the US were being withheld from the poor of Africa and millionsof people were dying needlessly. I volunteered to travel to Malawi to bear witness to the tragedy and, wherever possible, to contribute my expertise in treating opportunistic infections. In 2008 I became a trustee for that same organization, Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance (GAIA) and my life has been completely transformed by my love for the Malawian people and my drive to assist them in their struggle against poverty, famine and HIV/AIDS.
The United Nations reports that over 22 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV, representing 68% of the global HIV burden. Women and girls are particularly vulnerable: 76% of all HIV infected women live in this region. Malawi is a small south eastern African country with over 15 million people; a majority live on less than 2 dollars a day. The HIV prevalence rate is approximately 12% of the adult population and there are almost one million orphans in Malawi many because of AIDS.
I visited Malawi in 2006, one year after antiretrovirals were first introduced there: the government reported that over 95% of patients tolerated their treatment and most were able to return to work and care for their children. Just as it had happened in the US 10 years earlier, treatment for HIV was effective and millions would be saved, but only if we maintain adequate funding to the programs in place to support HIV treatment, such as PEPFAR started by President Bush.
GAIA works to alleviate the burden of HIV in Malawi by providing access to health care, training nurses in Malawi and caring for orphans. Please take the time to educate yourself on the worst epidemic the world has ever known.
Visit www.thegaia.org to see how a little bit can go a long way.
Etta Eskridge, M.D.
GAIA Trustee