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- Hearing Lakeland’s Fireworks Not The Same As Seeing Them, By George
- Time for a patriotic song.
- Crist Engaged To Rome
- Supremes: Crist Erred On Gambling Pact
- Polk Schools Dealing With High Diesel Costs
- Take trolley, streetcar to fireworks
- Isn’t it Fun to Fly?
- Hail, Gusty Winds, Possible Tornado Results From Afternoon Storms
- Portable High Definition Televisions
- Andy Martin—Remember Him?—Gets His Moment In The Sun
- There’s One Behind Every Tree …
- Tornado Warning Up For Sebring Area
- More Storms Heading Toward North Hillsborough, Southeast Pasco
- Storms Forming Near I-75
- Another Afternoon Of Active Thunderstorms
I meant to write about this a few days ago, but got sidetracked. I was talking to a reporter who has covered all 16 of the International AIDS Conferences. I asked him how things have changed since the beginning. One of the most striking things he said was that at the first conferences, you could look around and pick out the people who were HIV-positive. They were thin, pale, and many had scabs on their arms and face, he said. There were no drugs in those days. Only basic treatment followed in later years.
Now, as I look around this conference, I have no idea who is HIV-positive. In the developing world, people have access to drugs that allow them to live long, relatively healthy lives. There is actually a woman standing a few feet from me, and I know she is HIV-positive, but only because she spoke at an early session and disclosed her status.
There is good and bad about this. The good is obvious. No longer is HIV a death sentence. People have jobs, get married and have kids. It has also done a lot to alleviated stigma. But these are still primarily developed world results. In many third-world countries, people who test positive for HIV don’t get any medication. They lose weight, develop pneumonia, and have the same health problems people in the U.S. had 20 years ago. The dichotomy is striking. I’m not going to give any suggestions or opinions for what I think should be done about this, but will just say that it’s amazing to see how vastly different the impact of the same virus can be.
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Posted by Evelio Contreras, Roanoke, VA on 08/17 at 11:47 PM
Good observation. When I read an article in The Washington Post this week about gay men who have no outlets to talk about the disease in the D.C. area it reminded me of the time I was in Johannesburg and met a beatiful young woman who took care of a whole neighborhood that had about a dozen of people living with HIV. Going to their houses - many of them sick in bed - visibly touched the woman who could not keep herself from crying when talking about the people she cares for at length. I would hope that media channels and other online portals such as Yahoo! and Google help people see the pandemic impact of this disease in ways that Americans and others living in developed countries can relate to. Thanks for the updates!