AIDS. Do you think of AIDS much? There was a time, not so long ago, when everyone thought about AIDS. It was the topic of conversation everywhere. It was frightening; it was killing. Every day there seemed to be a report of another celebrity who had died of AIDS or who was suspected of having had the disease. Those days are gone, and AIDS is another fact of life. You don’t hear so much of people dying from AIDS, not here, and the disease has slipped to the back of your consciousness. That is, if you don’t have AIDS or are not HIV-positive, or know someone who does or is.
How many people are 20 million? Looking at the United States, the combined population of Washington DC, Vermont, North Dakota, Connecticut, South Dakota, Montana, Rhode Island, Delaware, New Mexico, Wyoming, West Virginia, Alaska, Nebraska, Idaho, New Hampshire, Maine, and Hawaii is roughly 20 million people. In Africa, 20 million people have died of AIDS. Despite advances in prevention and treatment, 3800 people in Africa die of AIDS every day. At that rate, the population of Wyoming would be wiped out in six months.
The Lazarus Effect, an HBO Documentary film, chronicles an effort at reducing those numbers. It will be shown at 9:00 p.m. (Eastern) on Monday, May 24. At only a half hour in length, it is a remarkable account of the difference antiretroviral drugs make in the lives of those who take them. Antiretrovirals (ARVs) do not cure HIV or AIDS; instead, they block HIV’s assault on the immune system. When taken regularly, they produce a miraculous effect; they bring people back from near death to good health. A treatment that once cost $10,000 per year per person is now available for 40 cents a day. Three million people receive it for free through various clinics in Africa.
When we first learned of AIDS, it was a “wasting disease” and “the thinning disease.” Little was known of this brewing epidemic; to get a diagnosis was to get a death sentence. Its effects are well demonstrated in The Lazarus Effect, as we see children and adults who are weakened to the point of immobility, who are no more than flesh-covered skeletons.
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Article comments
1 - Lynn Voedisch
According to the New York Times, however, we are losing that war in Africa, because (Red) and other such organizations are not enough. Individual funders have pulled out, leaving people who were once helped now on the brink of death.
Also prevention campaigns have flopped miserably. I'd like to say the picture is as rosy as this documentary presents it, but the world-wide recession has created a worse situation than we were in before.
2 - Miss Bob Etier
Lynn, unfortunately NYT is correct. In addition to the reasons you mention for this being a losing war is the fact that many people live in rural areas that are four or more days walk to the nearest clinic. Getting treatment to those small villages and settlements is nearly impossible.
(RED) may be trying to reinsert the crisis into our consciousness with the making and release of this documentary. How sad that people who were doing well on ARVs would be deprived and doomed.
In some African countries, as many as 1/3 of the population has AIDS or is HIV+. Prevention isn't much of a possibility when the disease is being passed in utero (although pregnant women do greatly reduce transmission to their babies if they are treated with ARVs during their pregnancy).