CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Nova Lei Gonzales, Fernando Dehoyos and Duane Riley, from left, enjoyed a Thanksgiving lunch Tuesday at the FoodBasket.
3 groups help people
live with HIVAs World AIDS Day nears,
organizations emphasize that
the enemy is complacency
AIDS isn't over!
This is the message concerned organizations want to get across to the public Monday during World AIDS Day observances in Hawaii.
"People are living longer, which is great, but people are still dying and people are very ill from the side effects of medications they are taking," said Jerry Ford, Gregory House Programs executive director.
"It definitely isn't over ... and we are still experiencing significant loss of some very bright, promising people. We're losing families, women as well, all ethnicities and socioeconomic classes. You name it; it's not restricted. HIV doesn't care."
With infected people leading longer, better-quality lives, the public has the impression that "all someone who is HIV-positive has to do is go to a doctor and take some drugs," said Nancy Kern, state Health Department STD/AIDS Prevention Coordinator.
But living with AIDS poses many challenges, she pointed out, including the high cost and number of drugs required for patients and debilitating side effects.
Hawaii has been able to provide services to people with HIV/AIDS because of state and federal funding, but the growing number of those living with the disease is straining resources, Kern said.
As of June, 2,767 AIDS cases had been reported to the Hawaii HIV/AIDS Surveillance program since 1983. Of those, 44 percent, or 1,230 cases, were known to be living with AIDS.
A total of 121 cases -- 106 male and 15 female -- were reported from June 2002 to June 2003.
An estimated 3,000 residents have HIV, according to the Health Department.
"There are still a lot of people who get infected every day, so even though the number of people who die with HIV/AIDS has diminished, the number of cases continues to rise," said Dr. Cyril Goshima, chairman of the governor's Committee on HIV/AIDS. The big push for Hawaii continues to be HIV prevention, he said.
It costs 10 times more to treat an HIV/AIDS case than to prevent an HIV infection, according to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
World AIDS Day marks the anniversaries of three grass-roots programs that have struggled to help residents affected by the epidemic:
>> Life Foundation, Hawaii's largest organization providing support for HIV-infected people, is celebrating its 20th anniversary.The food program was on the verge of collapse after three years when executive director John Manion, a lawyer, stepped forward as a volunteer seven years ago to save it. He operates the program with about 100 volunteers, half of whom are clients.>> Gregory House Programs, which provides housing and other services to people with HIV/AIDS, is 15 years old.
>> The FoodBasket, a nutrition program giving groceries and meals to infected residents twice a week, has been operating for 10 years.
They provide groceries and lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Church of the Crossroads, serving 300 to 400 HIV-positive people monthly. They had a special Thanksgiving lunch Tuesday. Clients also use donated vehicles to deliver groceries to people who are too ill or lack transportation to go to the church.
"It's truly a blessing for our clients," Manion said.
Gregory House Programs serves about 220 people statewide every month, 11 of whom live in the house. Others receive rental assistance and subsidies. About 45 people are on the waiting list for programs, Ford said.
Lack of housing for low-income people, coupled with HIV/AIDS patients living longer, is a serious concern because homeless people have no health care and are exposed to all kinds of things, he said.
Homeless people also are at high risk for becoming infected, Ford said. Hawaii's statewide needle exchange program has reduced reported AIDS cases among injection drug users, but there is still a risk of HIV transmission, as well as survival, he said, pointing out people will trade sex for a place to sleep and are not likely to disclose their disease.
Dr. David McEwan, chief of family medicine at the Honolulu Medical Group, heard the first cases of lesions associated with AIDS described at a medical meeting in San Francisco in 1981 and a month later then had his first patient with signs of the disease.
He talked to other doctors around the country and said, "It was very clear from the beginning that something bad was happening and it was going to last a long time."
He and three associates formed the Life Foundation in 1982 and incorporated it in 1983 to prevent AIDS from spreading in Hawaii. His surrogate Jewish mother during medical school used the phrase "L'chaim" ("to life") whenever they drank a glass of wine, he said. And though he knew AIDS would bring much death, he said he chose to affirm life with the new organization's work.
Paul Groesbeck, the foundation's executive director, said volunteers began telling people what AIDS was and was not. There was a lot of hysteria and "misinformation about how you get it, from mosquitoes, kissing, etc.," he said. Support groups and other programs were initiated to help people, who mostly were dying of AIDS in those days, he said.
After 20 years there is no cure, but "people are living with the hope that they can outlive AIDS," he said.
The Life Foundation has 580 clients and has served more than 2,200 in two decades, Groesbeck said. When he took his job 11 years ago, 76 percent of clients were haole; now it is 45 percent, he said. About 13 percent are women and three-fourths are gay, he said.
"The disease here has localized and diversified, so a lot of our HIV prevention work is targeted toward young men (19 to 29 years old) and the Asian-Pacific Islander populations, native Hawaiians, in particular.
"When David and his colleagues started the Life Foundation, I don't think even they knew how forward-thinking they were and that eventually their organization would help people live with AIDS, not die with AIDS," Groesbeck said.
"But if people are not vigilant, the rate of AIDS in the country and in Hawaii will go up again. Complacency is the worst thing with any health issue."
