Care Package

Frontdesk by David Waggoner

I nside the past three months I’ve received over a dozen letters sent anonymously from towns that I’ve never heard of: Shirley, Massachusetts; El Portal, California; Ashland, Kansas; Arcadia Lakes, South Carolina; Goshen, Alabama; Zia Pueblo, New Mexico; Troy, Montana. These towns and villages—if I may call them that—are not that familiar to anyone who’s been publishing an HIV/AIDS magazine for the last sixteen years. But they are genuine letters telling me that things are not going that well for them, that they’ve seen this magazine on a recent medical trip into Denver or Kansas City or Fresno. They tell me how hard it is to survive with HIV when no one (or at least no one they know) suffers with the same disease as they do in their immediate surroundings.

Just think about it, imagine it if you will, that you are also living without a support group, a food pantry, even a local AIDS service organization. This sort of social services network that we all take for granted is not within one hundred, maybe even two hundred miles. That the only way to get there is by car or by bus. America’s HIV population is certainly concentrated in more urban centers than not, but there is proof that AIDS in America isn’t only owned by New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, or Chicago. It’s much the same the world over. AIDS is everywhere and we are nowhere if we don’t recognize that there is a need for more unity.

This is one of the passions that drives Dr. Helene Gayle. In this month’s cover story, A&U’s B. Andrew Plant discovers what makes Helene tick. While the world continues to lose thousands everyday to this disease, Dr. Gayle doesn’t let up the slack in fighting it. As if she is always half a day ahead of the rest of us, Helene—as she prefers to be called—drives home the point that AIDS and poverty know each other very well. In order to eradicate the pandemic, we have to address the underlying social structures that cause poverty in the first place. Just like those letter writers from Smalltown, U.S.A., Gayle wants to familiarize as many people as possible about the problem of anonymity that ultimately breeds more violence in the world in the form of HIV.

For AIDS in Dr. Gayle’s view is ultimately a global problem that affects our security and our future. She states that “people in even the most dire circumstances...want the same things that you and I do. They want to have a secure life, they want a situation where they can have control over the main factors that influence their lives, and things like poverty and HIV often take that away from them.” As a wealthy nation we have the responsibility to lead others. That is why, when we’re worried about global security efforts, we should also take care of those whose lives are threatened by poverty and the adjunct of that decimator: HIV.

For Dr. Helene Gayle the international scope of AIDS is not so monumental when we consider that the simplest of actions can reap great rewards. When asked about the one thing anyone can do to help end the AIDS crisis, she responds: “We live in a country in which people don’t have a good sense of geography and what is going on around the globe. Be informed; be curious...use whatever vehicles you have in front of you to do what you can.”

This can-do spirit is very defining for many in the fight against AIDS. It is what started so many AIDS organizations, support groups, newsletters and magazines alike. Perhaps it’s not surprising that A&U does travel to faraway places right here in America. A road we should travel on more often if we’re ever going to learn how to extend our care abroad.

April 2007