IHV In the News
Activists get help in fight on AIDS
Grant: Maryland groups receive $335 million, part of the president's
pledge to fight the disease and help victims in Africa and elsewhere.
Baltimore Sun
February 29, 2004
By Mary Gail Hare
Sun Staff
In many areas of Africa, the stigma of AIDS so alienates people that many refuse
to be tested. Those who are diagnosed with the virus are often ostracized, even
from their own families, and left with no hope for treatment.
In the global battle against HIV and acquired immune deficiency syndrome, a
$335 million federal grant will soon provide countries in Africa, as well as
in the Caribbean and Latin America, with the anti-retroviral medications that
have revolutionized care in the United States.
"Once people know there are meds, it could all be different," said
Esther Ndiang'ui, who recently moved to the United States from Kenya, where
she worked in health care. "They know meds can save their lives. Mothers
will get treated because they know the meds will help their babies."
The federal Health Resources and Services Administration announced the grant
last week as part of the first phase of the Bush administration's pledge to
spend $15 billion in a five-year effort to
fight AIDS. A Maryland-based consortium that includes Catholic
Relief Services, the University of Maryland Institute of Human Virology and
Interchurch Medical Assistance Inc. in New Windsor, where Ndiang'ui has worked
for the past year, will share the grant.
With the drugs comes hope, said Jacqueline Patterson, infectious diseases program
manager at IMA, a nonprofit association of 12 Protestant relief and development
agencies. The organization's role in implementing the grant will likely be a
continuation of its efforts to procure medical equipment, supplies and pharmaceuticals,
and deliver them to its partners around the world, many of whom are Protestant
missionaries.
| "The availability of drugs will have widespread practical
and social ramifications," said Patterson, a New Windsor resident.
"Drugs and education can mean this is not a death sentence. The chances
for transmitting the virus will lessen. AIDS could become ! a chronic disease
as opposed to certain death." |
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The grant could help prevent as many as 7 million new infections worldwide
and provide care and support for more than 10 million people living with the
illness, health officials said.
"When the retrovirals first came out, they were so expensive they were
not an option for many in Africa," said Dr. Glen Brubaker, a physician
who spent more than 30 years as a missionary to Tanzania and is continuing his
research for IMA in New Windsor. "Now we can offer these aggressive treatments
to many people. All the resources this grant will offer to hospitals, labs,
even information systems will have wide effects. And we can tell patients there
is something available for them."
As assistant vice president for program audits and support at IMA, Ndiang'ui
helped write the grant application for IMA. Six years of delivering home-based
care in Kenya, where at one time as many as 14 percent of the population was
infected with AIDS, gave her firsthand accounts of the devastation.
"I have ! had AIDS patients tell me that no one will even shake their
hands and others whose own mothers will have nothing to do with them,"
she said. "It is devastating when even the person closest to you doesn't
want you. In many areas, AIDS is not just a disease. It is a curse."
The lack of treatment and the stigma contributed to the spread of the disease
often meant people ignored symptoms, she said. Government and churches have
joined the battle, she said.
"People refuse to be tested for HIV because of the stigma and because
they know there is nothing they will get in return for finding out they have
the disease," said Ndiang'ui, who lives in Reisterstown. "In the past,
everyone refused to talk about AIDS, and a lot went wrong."
The grant will also provide medicine to fight illnesses associated with AIDS
and money for much-needed support programs, including those aimed at eliminating
the stigma surrounding the illness.
Patterson, who interrupted a two! -month tour in Africa to help plan the implementation
of the grant, en visions training programs, research labs and referral networks
across the continent. She sees testing, counseling and immediate referrals for
those who need support.
"It means we can hire HIV program officers, set up new clinics and scale
up the ones that are there already," Patterson said. "We will have
resources to strengthen the drug delivery system into an uninterrupted supply
chain. But it goes beyond the provision of drugs to nutritional and support
programs."
New outreach programs might mean health workers can treat people sooner, Ndiang'ui
said. She recalled times when she encountered starving and bedridden patients
who were physically unable to take what medications she could offer.
"We cannot just watch whole populations die," she said. "A lot
needs to be done, and we have to start somewhere."
Copyright (c) 2004 The Baltimore Sun Company
Record Number: 0402290032
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