Taking aim at AIDS
Newport Beach resident Tom Peterson still remembers what he calls “the carnage” of the AIDS epidemic when it first hit the United States in the 1980s.
Peterson, a senior consultant for legislative advocacy locally and nationally, watched as many in his community died from AIDS complications “when there was so little that could be done,” he said.
“Seeing so many of my friends impacted by AIDS, I wanted to apply myself to get the government involved,” Peterson said. “And so I did.”
This was part of the message Peterson delivered Wednesday morning at the 2007 Global Summit on AIDS held at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest during a workshop covering HIV/AIDS in the United States specifically.
During the next three days church leaders, researchers — local and international — government representatives, and activists will gather together to tackle varying issues associated with the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Even presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is scheduled to fly in and speak at the conference. A youth summit will follow the event on Saturday. That’s important because people under the age of 25 are the most likely to contract HIV, officials said.
The younger generations assume that HIV does not have the same catastrophic effects that it did when it came to prominence in the early ’80s. Today’s young adults incorrectly assume that HIV has gone away and is easily treatable, Peterson said.
More than 40,000 people get infected every year in the United States, said CDC presenter Booker Daniels. That’s roughly 100 people every day.
And here are some more national statistics.
As of 2005, more than 1.1 million people are believed to be living with HIV/AIDS in the country, and 25% of them are unaware that they are even infected.
In 1992, AIDS was reported as the leading killer of people under 25 in Orange County.
Women are far more likely to contract HIV from intercourse, and it’s hitting the stereotypical suburban moms with the 2.5 kids, a mortgage and bills to pay, presenters agreed unanimously.
But by far the largest growing population of those infected with HIV is African American women.
They are 21% more likely to get infected, and represent nearly 67% of the women diagnosed in the country each year, according to the CDC’s 2005 statistics.
“African Americans are vastly underrepresented; this is now an African American epidemic,” presenter David Miller said.
Uneducated stigmas associated with the disease also keep a great deal of people from seeking medical help or aid from their friends and community, Peterson said.
“Despite all of the advances in HIV treatment, there’s always the underlying, unasked question of how did a person become infected,” Peterson said. “We don’t judge someone morally for getting diagnosed with cancer.”
There’s always been this stigma suggesting this disease mainly affects gays and drug users, Peterson said. These uneducated assumptions tend to imply that getting the disease is somehow that person’s fault or the consequence of something they did, not something that’s happening to them, Peterson added.
There needs to be national plan of action in Peterson’s view.
“When our government helps other countries impacted by AIDS we require a national strategy, but our government has no plan of its own,” Peterson said.
It took a teenage boy in middle America suffering from hemophilia nearly a decade after the first registered outbreak in the country for the government to begin writing federal legislation to aid those diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.
In August of 1990, the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resource Emergency Act passed, named after the young man who contracted the illness through blood transfusions associated with his hemophilia.
Ryan died before the bill was signed.
The act provides $2.1 billion annually primarily to low-income people, the uninsured or under-insured, and is the largest federal program designed specifically to assist people living with the infection. Every year, $6 million of those funds aid programs in Orange County, and another $6 million goes toward in-county pharmaceutical care, Peterson said.
In 2009, the act “sunsets” indefinitely and Peterson has made it his goal to work with legislators to make sure a new act passes and best combats HIV/AIDS as it affects the country at present.
Things have changed significantly over the last 17 years, and the bill needs to reflect that, Peterson said.
“When we are talking about HIV today, we can’t separate the disease from the problems that accompany the patient, mental illness, drug use or the conditions of the person’s life, homelessness, poverty; all those aspects overlap the underlying issue of HIV,” Peterson said.
“We’re living longer, but not better; now we’re dying of liver failure and heart disease,” Miller said. “We don’t have enough factories to produce the drugs we need for the 60 million people [who will be infected] by 2010,” Miller said.
ON THE WEB
Links to HIV/AIDS assistance and facts:
https://hab.hrsa.gov/history.htm
KELLY STRODL may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at kelly.strodl@latimes.com.
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