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By Galina Yudovich
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Nov. 18, 2004 |
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Part One
Chagua Camacho-Olguin will run 26 miles on Feb. 27 to honor all the people and their families who suffer from the AIDS epidemic because she has the luxury of health and the knowledge to preserve it.
I am running for those who would be running with us, but cannot, because the disease runs faster, Camacho-Olguin said, who is taking part in the National AIDS Marathon in New Orleans.
As a research investigator at AGUILAS, a San Francisco-based organization dedicated to preventing AIDS in the Latino community, Camacho-Olguin has seen the opportunities San Francisco offers to those with the disease.
The people we deal with need support, and medicine is expensive, Camacho-Olguin said. Many have no insurance. But San Francisco has huge resources people can get medicine no matter what.
However, the situation abroad is more dire.
On Dec. 1, Artists Against AIDS USA will take part in World AIDS Day to combat the drastic AIDS rates in foreign countries by sponsoring special guest performances, speakers and a candlelight ceremony beginning at sunset in Union Square.
Focusing on women
The theme this year is women, with a focus on young women, said Paolo Lyra, HIV/AIDS communications advisor at the World Health Organization. Women now constitute 50 percent of all people living with HIV worldwide, according to UNAIDS, the United Nations program to combat AIDS internationally (www.unaids.org). In some Sub-Saharan countries, women have been hit the hardest: An African female is 1.2 times as likely to contract the disease as a male.
The high rate of female deaths from AIDS creates a ripple effect: Twelve million children living in Sub-Saharan Africa at the end of 2003 have lost one or both parents due to AIDS another reason that World AIDS Day will focus on womens plight.
Women face unique challenges in protecting themselves from HIV, according to UCSan Francisco Center for AIDS Prevention Studies researcher Martin Gross. Women are less able to protect themselves, Gross said. There are cultures in which it is impossible for a woman to tell her husband to put on a condom.
The current Sugar-Daddy phenomenon is another problem.
Many young women in developing countries, especially in Africa, rely on older men for their survival: rent, food, et cetera, Gross said. The only thing these women have to trade is sex.
Add the biological factor that its easier for a man to infect a woman than the other way around, and women become easy targets for the disease.
The worldwide epidemic spans all cultural and physical divides. Gross spent time in Mexico last year, where the number of people with the disease is daunting. More than two million people are now living with HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the United Kingdom-based international AIDS charity AVERT (www.avert.org). This includes an estimated 200,000 who contracted HIV in the past year. At least 100,000 people died of AIDS in the same period, the highest regional death toll after sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, according to AVERT.
| Despite U.S. awareness, the international HIV crisis continues to worsen - even if scientists find a cure, can the epidemic be stopped? |
AIDS is a monumental field that needs to be dealt with, Gross said. Its fascinating that the most affected countries have little awareness. Here, its all we talk about.
AIDS is increasing in Southeast Asia, China and Russia, mainly due to drug injections, according to UNAIDS.
Fighting Stigma
Gross said that he believes AIDS continues to spread because it is a stigmatized disease. So many governments have not dealt with AIDS publicly (and have) not created national programs. This leads to a lack of treatment options for people to deal with AIDS once they get the disease.
Gross attributes this lapse to the original reaction rate of countries when the disease emerged in the early 80s.
The U.S. public health infrastructure acted to contain the disease in high-risk communities, he said. Other countries still avoid discussing AIDS because it is a sexually transmitted disease.
The disease itself is another taboo. AVERT believes that the prejudice felt by HIV-positive people prevent them from coming out as being HIV-positive. The organization also urges support and care for children orphaned by AIDS, so that they can grow up safely, without experiencing poverty, exploitation and themselves falling prey to HIV.
Forming a strategy
Currently, organizations are taking multiple simultaneous approaches to combating the disease, according to Gross.
Were coming at AIDS from a multi-faceted approach, he said. Everything from nutrition to economic development.
Because an estimated five million people in low and middle-income countries do not have the AIDS drugs that could save their lives, WHO has introduced the 3 by 5 initiative, a global target to get three million people living with HIV/AIDS in developing and middle income countries on antiretroviral treatment by the end of 2005.
Lack of access to antiretroviral therapy is a global health emergency, stated Lee Jong-Wook, Director General of WHO, according to (www.who.int.) To deliver antiretroviral treatment to the millions who need it, we must change the way we think and change the way we act.
However, 3 by 5 is nowhere near an accomplished fact, according to Lrya.
Education remains the number one way to combat the epidemic. HIV prevention initiatives need to be increased, and people across the world need to be made aware of the dangers, the risks and the ways they can protect themselves, according to AVERT. Condom promotion and supply needs to be increased, and the appropriate sexual health education needs to be provided to young people before they reach an age where they become sexually active. As long as sex-ed is considered taboo, HIV will spread.
However, Lyra claims that information doesnt always make people change their behavior.
People think it cant happen to them, he said.
Gross predicts that a cure is at least 10 years away because the virus mutates rapidly and few countries are wealthy enough to fund their own drug research and buy the latest drugs to combat AIDS.
Vaccines have been developed, but the virus mutates too fast, he said.
However, if a cure were found today, Gross said that he predicts developing countries would receive the treatment several years after wealthier countries.
There is no money incentive for pharmaceutical companies to get the product out to places like Africa, he said.
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