https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2806189
"The year was 2002 and Dr Catherine Orrell, a physician working at the Desmond
Tutu HIV Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa, was loading antiretroviral
therapy (ART) into the back of her car. She had procured funding for the
supplies through a nongovernmental organization in the United Kingdom and was
going to deliver them to the sickest patients in her care while simultaneously
going to pick up pills from the families of patients who had died of AIDS. ART
was too valuable to waste.
She had few success stories—like the patient she saw at the Red Cross in Cape
Town who had made the thousand-mile journey from her home in rural KwaZulu
Natal, to get her son treatment for tuberculosis. She was so ill when she
arrived that she was tested for HIV and learned it was advanced. She was one of
the first patients to start ART, and not only survived, but became an adherence
counselor, going on to support hundreds of other patients on their journey with
long-term therapy.
But most of Dr Orrell’s patients were not so fortunate. Funerals were a regular
weekend activity for South Africans; an estimated 2.4 million Africans died
from AIDS that year and the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS)
reported that AIDS was the leading cause of death on the African continent. By
2003, the average life expectancy in southern Africa fell from 62 to 47 years
due to AIDS. It was a story of 2 pandemics—one in which life and death hung in
the balance. Individuals living in high-resource settings were able to access
lifesaving treatment that had been available since 1996, while those who lived
in low-resource settings were destined to become “the lost generation” without
access to lifesaving therapy.
It was during this time that a small group of individuals, led by Dr Anthony
Fauci, were meeting behind closed doors to draft a blueprint commissioned by
then-President George W. Bush, that would change the course of history. In his
State of the Union Address on January 28, 2003, President Bush announced the
creation of the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
(PEPFAR)—with $15 billion provided over a 5-year plan to combat AIDS in the
countries with the greatest disease burden. President Bush set bold program
targets for getting people access to HIV treatment and preventing new
infections. Two decades later, PEPFAR remains the largest investment by the US
government to fight a single disease. It has fundamentally shifted the paradigm
of how global public health investments are made with goals and impact
monitoring, and for many, it has provided a roadmap of how to build capacity in
global health."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-inequality-aids-south-africa-tortoises-galapagos/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
