(Graphic: via UK Gay News)
It’s nearly impossible to believe that the 20th World AIDS Day is approaching. And twenty isn’t even the beginning of what has become, historically, the worst global health catastrophe ever — an epidemic that has taken too many lives and decimated far too many families and communities in the US and around the world. UK Gay News has a several timely reminders that, despite media indifference and waning interest in our own community, this epidemic is still among us and still claiming many of our best and brightest.
From UK Gay News:
World AIDS Day Marks 20th Anniversary of Solidarity
By Sara SpeicherAMSTERDAM, November 20, 2008 (World AIDS Campaign) – For Eric Sawyer, the late 1980s was a “war time situation”.
“People with AIDS were fighting for their lives and for their friends”, says Sawyer, an AIDS activist and co-founder of ACT UP New York.
By 1988, seven years after the first case of AIDS was reported, AIDS was causing more deaths in the US then there were in the Vietnam War, and between 5 and 10 million people were estimated to be infected with HIV around the world.
Yet governments, media and society in general were not giving AIDS adequate attention. So, “people with AIDS had to literally take to the streets and block traffic and take over government buildings”, Sawyer recalls.
Sawyer had been on the front lines of the AIDS epidemic since developing his first HIV-related symptoms in 1981, before AIDS was officially identified. For him and for thousands of other activists around the world, the formation of World AIDS Day in 1988 was one of the few moments in the year where the growing tragedy of AIDS would finally get attention around the globe.
Now at its 20th anniversary, World AIDS Day continues to be the focus of global solidarity for a pandemic that has led to over 25 million deaths with an estimated 33 million people currently living with HIV worldwide.
Andy at UK Gay News also points to an upcoming BBC Radio special, produced by Made in Manchester Productions, called How Aids Changed America. The program is to be hosted by Paul Michael Glaser, of Starsky and Hutch fame. Glaser lost his wife Elizabeth, a prominent AIDS activist, and their daughter to AIDS.
From UK Gay News:
BBC Radio to Examine How Aids Changed America
MANCHESTER, November 20, 2008 – American actor Paul Michael Glaser, who played Starsky in the long running US cop series Starsky and Hutch, is to host a special BBC Radio programme to coincide with World Aids Day.
How Aids Changed America is to be transmitted on BBC Radio 2, Britain’s most listened to radio station, at 10.30om on Tuesday December 2 – the day following World Aids Day.
In the programme, produced by Made in Manchester Productions for the BBC, Mr Glaser will look back at nearly three decades of pain, prejudice and progress in the American peoples’ struggle with HIV/Aids.
[ ... ]
How Aids Changed America examines the pain – from the heady disco days of pre-Aids San Francisco through the shocking arrival of Aids on the gay scene, and how citizen after citizen was suddenly struck down by this mysterious new illness.
It charts the prejudice – how the illness was misunderstood in the early years and how the US establishment struggled to come to terms with what was happening.
It also looks at the progress – greater awareness and acceptance of people with the virus, and the emergence of life-extending drugs.
And it brings things bang up to date as we examine whether or not Aids, which has claimed the lives of more than half a million US citizens, really has changed America after all.
Those recalling the early days of HIV/Aids in America include Cleve Jones, founder of the HIV/Aids Memorial Quilt, controversial gay rights activist Larry Kramer and Paul Michael Glaser himself.
Here in the US, a week of action coinciding with World AIDS Day is planned, including a rally, on 1 December 2008, outside the White House in Washington DC, where the rate of new AIDS cases is 12 times the national average. The demands are clear and urgent:
- $8 billion over 5 years in new money to fund the training and retention of the African healthcare workers that will be needed to reach Universal Access by 2010.
- $2.6 billion in funding for the Ryan White CARE Act for treatment and care to people living with AIDS in the US, in BOTH rural and urban areas.
- Trade rules that promote access to AIDS medicines and an end to bilateral free trade agreements that put big pharmaceutical interests ahead of those living with HIV/AIDS.
- Full funding for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria—at least $700 million this year from the US.
