Rotary AIDS day event turns spotlight on world’s deadliest infectious disease

"Even with the Ebola outbreak at its worst expected levels, it's never going to reach what we've seen with the HIV/AIDS epidemic," said Dr. Timothy B. Erickson, director of the Center for Global Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, speaking at Rotary's World AIDS Day event in Evanston on 1 December. "There's a lot of mystery behind Ebola, and it's grabbing the headlines," he said. "But we need to keep [focused] on what's killing people."

Warning that donor fatigue is causing a drop in funding for AIDS prevention and research, Erickson said that the time to give is now, because biomedical advances hold the promise of eliminating the disease. Existing drugs are making it possible for a person with HIV to have a long and normal life without developing AIDS. And, perhaps even more promising, a person who is HIV-positive and receives treatment is 95 percent less likely to spread the disease than someone who goes without treatment.

Rotary is involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS through its emphasis on disease prevention and treatment, one of its six areas of focus. Rotary clubs sponsor projects to help those infected with HIV and hold school forums to educate young people about lowering their risk of infection. A Rotarian Action Group, Rotarians for Family Health and AIDS Prevention (RFHA), organizes large-scale Family Health Days in sub-Saharan Africa to deliver HIV screening and counseling along with a wide range of health services.

But despite the advances, problems remain in getting help to the people who need it. A major obstacle, according to another expert who spoke at the World AIDS Day event, is the stigma that is still often attached to HIV/AIDS.

"One of the biggest things that prevents us from getting people tested, getting people linked to medical providers, is that people anticipate the stigma they are going to confront," said Matt Richards, director of Care2Prevent at the University of Chicago, a pediatric and adolescent HIV treatment and prevention program.

Richards said that less than 25 percent of HIV-positive people in the United States are receiving virus-suppressing treatment.

RFHA aims to minimize the stigma and reach as many people as possible with its Family Health Days by focusing the event on the entire family. Mothers bring their children to receive polio and measles vaccines, and adults come to be screened for tuberculosis, malaria, diabetes, and hypertension as well as HIV.

"There is something for everyone," said Marion Bunch, a Rotary member from Atlanta, Georgia, USA, who founded the group after her son died of AIDS in 1994. "We added all these enticing services to get them to come and to bring their kids. They will not come just for HIV," she said.

By partnering with governments, nongovernmental organizations, and private foundations, the Rotarian Action Group has steadily expanded the scope of its Family Health Days, from 100 sites in Uganda and Nigeria in 2011 to 414 sites last spring across Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, and Swaziland. MTN, an African telecommunications company, has signed on as a partner for next year's health days in South Africa.

In Georgia, Rotary clubs sponsor an AIDS Awareness program in schools. Students in seventh, eighth, and ninth grades learn how to avoid HIV, and hear first-person accounts about living with the virus. Bunch says it's a program that any club could easily replicate.

Rotary's World AIDS Day event was the latest in a series of global updates in the areas of focus, where Rotary directs its efforts. Another update, on water and sanitation, is planned in March for World Water Day.

Learn more about our areas of focus
Learn more about Rotarians for Family Health and AIDS Prevention
Read a blog post from Marion Bunch

By Arnold R. Grahl - Rotary News - 17-Dec-2014