15259: (Chamberlain) Hope Against AIDS (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By IAN JAMES

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, April 7 (AP) -- The emaciated men lie in hospital
cots, straining to breathe and moaning in pain as AIDS drains away life.
   Many arrive at the clinic so weak they are carried in wheelbarrows.
Without access to modern health care or lifesaving drugs now common in
wealthier countries, the patients can only wait for death.
   Some last months, others only days.
   "I'd like to be able to live again," said 43-year-old Wilfrid
Jean-Baptiste, cringing as a volunteer pricked his arm with an IV needle.
Soon afterward, he was dead.
   With an estimated 300,000 of Haiti's 8.3 million people infected, AIDS
is the leading cause of death for sexually active adults, killing thousands
each year.
   But doctors say many more can be saved with the help of a new $25
million grant from the U.N.-initiated Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria.
   The first disbursements reached nonprofit groups in Haiti in March. Over
the next two years, the money is to be used to help expand prevention and
treatment programs and buy antiretroviral medicines for thousands of new
patients.
   A proposal by President Bush, still to be approved by Congress, would
devote an additional $15 billion to fighting AIDS over the next five years
in Africa and the Caribbean, including Haiti.
   Bush calls the plan "a work of mercy."
   International negotiations have drastically reduced prices of AIDS
drugs, but they remain out of reach for most Haitians, who often struggle
to survive on $1 a day or less.
   It costs $2,000 a year to treat one patient with the life-giving
antiretroviral cocktail.
   So 37-year-old Maria Malo has quickly exhausted her savings and the
generosity of family and friends. The white-and-yellow pills have taken
away her diarrhea and given her strength to care for her 9-year-old son,
but she doesn't know how she will pay for the next batch.
   "I mainly ask God to help me survive so that I can take care of my
child," said Malo, who was a nurse until the disease prevented her from
working.
   At the Missionaries of Charity Brothers clinic, a dozen men with
advanced AIDS waste away in cots, some hacking with tuberculosis.
   Volunteers treat their pain and symptoms, but death comes often. More
than a dozen have died there this year.
   It doesn't have to be this way. Danielle Penette, who runs the Rainbow
House home for AIDS orphans, has seen sick kids come back to life in days
with antiretroviral drugs.
   "It was like a flower drying and blossoming again," said Penette, who
buys drugs with UNICEF funds for 15 of the 30 infected children.
   The Caribbean has the world's second-highest infection rate -- 2 percent
-- after sub-Saharan Africa. The figures exclude Cuba, where screening and
education keep rates low.
   While Haiti accounts for most Caribbean cases, doctors say prevention
programs are helping. Studies suggest the percentage of sexually active
adults infected, now estimated at 4.5 percent, has been declining.
   Money from the Geneva-based Global Fund will help train doctors and
nurses to provide treatment and testing for HIV, the virus that causes
AIDS. Money also will go to prevention programs.
   "I think it's going to be a huge success," said Dr. Jean William Pape,
whose Gheskio clinic treated more than 21,000 AIDS patients last year.
   Pape, a professor of New York's Cornell University, will use $1.7
million from the fund to expand testing, treatment and counseling to 25 new
centers in hospitals and clinics throughout the country.
   The Global Fund also is sending $2.5 million this year to help a network
of hospitals and clinics in Haiti's impoverished central plateau. Dr. Paul
Farmer said the money should more than double the number of patients seen
regularly there, to about 8,000.
   His Boston-based nonprofit Partners in Health is already obtaining
cheaper generic drugs, but urgent needs remain.
   "We lose patients every week because we don't have enough meds," said
Farmer, a Harvard Medical School professor.
   In other areas, even simple care is unobtainable.
   A $22.5 million loan approved by the Inter-American Development Bank
would help reorganize Haiti's troubled health system, but it's part of $500
million in aid blocked since disputed elections in 2000.
   Haiti's government is urging the loan's release to help fight AIDS.
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide also criticizes the United States for
blocking aid to the government.
   Nevertheless, the United States is giving about $15 million to nonprofit
groups for HIV/AIDS programs in Haiti over the next two years.
   Stigma surrounding the disease still keeps many Haitians from discussing
it or seeking treatment.
   Some attribute it to evil spirits.
   "I think the wind gave him the fever," said Marie-Michelle Pierre-Louis,
who lifted a cup of water to the mouth of her emaciated boyfriend, Robinson
Duroseau, at the missionaries' clinic.
   Spending nights in the hallway with their infant son, she said she was
hopeful the 24-year-old would soon be well. "God is going to make him OK,"
she said.
   Four days later, he died.
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   On the Net:
   http://www.globalfundatm.org
   http://www.pih.org/wherewework/haiti