A World without AIDS?!
The very thought of living in a world without AIDS, seems so unreal to me, and yet such a time did exist, not too long before I was born. As I was reading the following article today, I couldn't help but want to share it with my blog viewers simply because I feel the need to continue talking of it as a serious topic. Why do I fear that the perception of AIDS might become a normal affair, where we become comfortable with the idea of the existence of AIDS?
On that note, I introduce to you an article by Dr. Sanjay Gupta (dated: April 26, 2006) courtesy of CNN.com:
Imagining a world without AIDS
NEW YORK (CNN) -- About 8,000 people die of AIDS every day. Another 6,000 people between ages 15 and 24 contract HIV on a daily basis.
Think about that: At the end of this month, more people will have died from AIDS in April alone than were killed in the Southeast Asia tsunami that shocked the world in late 2004. And the epidemic keeps spreading. There are currently an estimated 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS across the world.
How can a disease so deadly and so rampant not make the news any more? How could it have fallen off the radar screens of news executives?
It turns out that fighting the apathy surrounding HIV/AIDS is as tricky as fighting the virus itself. And, by today's standards, the only way AIDS will really be in the headlines again is when it is cured or eradicated.
That is a difficult standard by anyone's measure, and it unfortunately belittles the real and effective gains made against AIDS.
Today, there are more than 20 drug regimens available that allow a person with AIDS to live a normal lifespan, if he or she can get treatment. The risk of heartbreaking mother-to-child transmission has been reduced significantly with simple drugs. And for the first time, thanks to the efforts of non-governmental organizations like the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative, many of these medications are affordable to those who need the drugs most.
President Clinton once told me, "AIDS used to be about two things nobody wanted to talk about: sex and death. While the disease still centers around sex, it is no longer just about death."
It is also true that though the disease often involves sex, it isn't sexy.
Why don't more people care about this disease? It could be that despite the extraordinarily high numbers, the vast majority of people have never been personally touched by AIDS. I came to better understand HIV/AIDS as a doctor and a journalist when I traveled the world meeting patients.
From Thailand to Kenya to Rwanda to India to the United States, the faces staring back at me were the same faces I had seen my entire life.
A soft-spoken veiled woman on the predominantly Muslim island of Zanzibar told me of her life with HIV. A struggling Kenyan mother named Nancy Ndegwa who had worked for 20 years as a prostitute miraculously never became infected, despite thousands of exposures to the virus. I spoke with young Thai teenagers who had been kicked out of their homes because of their HIV status, and I met a couple in North Carolina who can no longer afford the medications to keep them alive, unless they give up some of the necessities of life.
"My son was diagnosed several years ago as HIV positive," a CNN.com user wrote. "We come from an upper-middle-class background. I look at the way AIDS has become a disease that effects all. Just as we have an obligation to support countries that are victims of genocide, so should we support the hungry and those suffering from AIDS."
All across the world and right here in our backyards, people have shared their stories with me and with CNN viewers to provide a better understanding of what it is like to live and die with the disease. Once you have met these people, you could not help but want to learn more about the disease and its many ramifications. It is probably also the reason I cried out loud when I recently read that a 15-year-old boy in Nairobi was hacked to death with a garden fork after he was diagnosed with HIV.
It has been 25 years since the world was first introduced to an AIDS patient, and now anyone born after 1980 has never known a world without AIDS.
The attitudes have changed: The general feeling among young people we interviewed was, "Sure, it's a bad disease you don't want to get, but it is treatable, and people can live with it."
Of course, that might explain a resurgence of high-risk behavior and a reluctance to get tested in the first place. Those same young people were shocked when I told them "in some communities, 90 percent of the people living with HIV don't even know they have it."
The simple fact is that AIDS is not going away, and we are not even close to a cure or eradication. For now, treatment and prevention are the most vital part of the fight.
Many organizations are working on many forms of prevention. We are making strides toward striking a comfortable complacency with AIDS, but I want to take it one step further.
This weekend, I will host a town hall meeting about AIDS. The discussion will take place in New York, and my guests will be former President Bill Clinton, the heads of several major pharmaceutical companies, dignitaries from around the world, the chief of MTV and actors who have shown true commitment to this issue.
I hope you will join us. "The End of AIDS: A Global Summit with President Clinton" will air at 8 p.m., Saturday, April 29.
posted by surbhi seth @ 10:55 AM
7 Comments:
hi....thnx for ur comment.tha twas soooooo encouraging.....n thnx for all ur wishes too....u are putting a lot of effort into ur blog in its wonderful too!! all da very best to you too......
AIDS cases are rapidly increasing in India, China and throughout South East Asia. It has made the transition from sex workers and drug addicts to the middle class. In the U.S. and Europe, after a long struggle against the stigma of a gay man's disease, the medical and political establishments were able to treat AIDS and slow the spread. The fact that infection rates are increasing has to do with the increasing sense of fatalism in the youth of the West. In the East, the rapid spread of AIDS is due to the overwhelming lack of rights for women. The caste system in India. The sex industry in Thailand and The Phillipines contribute to speading the virus worldwide. The lack of open goverments, and the treatment of AIDS patients as criminals will only further fuel the spread through the world.
Brian
And why wasn't your minor journalism?
"Why do I fear that the perception of AIDS might become a normal affair, where we become comfortable with the idea of the existence of AIDS?"
I think that's already happened. It's become an almost-cureable disease for the developed world, so it seems like its not such a big deal anymore.
And as long as we only hear stories of what deveopping countries are not doing to help slow infection rates, then it'll always seem to be a problem that just exists 'over there', and well "there's nothing that we can do about it, because they can't do anything about it either, and its their country and they should know best", so not too many people will pay attention to any media coverage AIDS will get.
We don't hear enough about the success stories of some countries that managed to slow and even reverse infection rate growth. Maybe if more of those stories were covered, people would realize that there is still alot that can be done.
Andrea said it best. Cool post
Apurva: Thanks! I try!;)
Brian: I'm glad you brought up the cultural and geographical aspects to the issue on hand, as AIDS is indeed treated differently or indifferently depending on where/who you are or/and where you come from. A friend of mine was telling me the other day, how one of his neighbors' son was diagnosed with the disease and I wasn't surprised to hear that the family kept him confined to his room, hoping for him to die soon so they wouldn't have to live with the shame he caused his family. This event took place here in the US, but the family, having come from South East Asia, still views the disease as a stigma. Another thing that wouldn't surprise me is the idea of not sex-educating their son.
Ms. Trini: Lol... you're pulling my leg!
Em: :( You know… you're so correct, but I guess there's this part in me who's hoping to hear otherwise. The developed fraction of the world has the resources to be in a position, to spread awareness, to make the necessary drugs available, and if you can't afford it, some non-profit orgs. help make it affordable… they pretty much have a well-organized system of dealing with it. So yeah, people are aware, they get tested, the get diagnosed and then most of them are able to get treated. That, to the developing world, is a luxury. We don't hear of an entire family getting wiped out because of AIDS in the west, but in countries like Africa and Asia, that isn't new. I've been told of how only an uncle and his daughter, a grandmother (who is HIV positive), her daughter-in-law and her two kids are the only remnants of what used to be a 23 people family in Uganda. It feels like the increasing figures of HIV positive people are going out of control. I've heard of the Malthusian theory which basically asserts that if there isn't a balance between food supply and population, nature will take its toll by making sure the population is checked by natural calamities, famine and disease. It seems like AIDS is turning out to be a live example of Malthus' theory. Scary.
Ko4: You are too kind! Thanks.
Seeking other HIV positive people (AIDS, PLWA) to chat about dealing with being "POZ", please drop in and visit me on http://www.13km.com ;)
Post a Comment
<< Home