Tuesday, February 26, 2019
A Disease Entrenched in Poverty
It can cost upward of $2000/month to
treat HIV/AIDS-infected patients into a reasonable and productive life. For
those with access to reasonable medical care, it is an affordable treatment
option. For those who cannot afford the treatment and are otherwise not covered
by a government healthcare program, the infection can be a death sentence. The
federal government recently announced grandiose plans to stop this epidemic,
but it often precisely the federal government (with lots of help from
conservative states) that insures that such achievable goals will simply not
happen.
Anything that curtails the expansion
of Medicaid, makes knowingly having
HIV/AIDS and having sex a felony, allows state Affordable Care Act healthcare
exchanges to issue “skinny” insurance plans that just do not cover this
infection, or impose preconditions/work requirements impacts lower income
communities’ access to needed healthcare. Since HIV/AIDS is disproportionately
spread within the lowest income sectors, states with the greatest resistance to
social programs for impoverished constituents also have disproportionately
higher rates of untreated HIV/AIDS victims, particularly red states with
significant urban centers. The red-state Southeast has become this nation’s
most serious HIV/AIDS problem area.
The stigma of HIV/AIDS is a challenge
to conservative Southern values where even the notion of approving
availabilities for clean needles for drug addicts, often HIV/AIDS sufferers,
have to be approved by red state legislators. An easy prevention effort. You
can guess what those legislators feel about appropriating money for that.
Like so many promises made by the
Trump administration, the pledge to eradicate HIV/AID is long on slogans but
short of funded solutions. “In his State of the Union address earlier this
month, President Trump announced a plan to halt the transmission of HIV in the
U.S. by 2030. But clinics face a knot of obstacles to meeting that target. The
problems are most severe in the Southeast, currently the epicenter of the
nation’s HIV epidemic.
“‘We have the technology, we have the
expertise, to prevent HIV and allow those who unfortunately contract it to live
healthy and productive lives,’ said Nicole Roebuck, executive director of AID
Atlanta, an agency that has provided HIV/AIDS-related services and care since
1982. ‘But the funding is never enough, and the stigma in the South is still a
debilitating factor, especially for people of color.’
“The number of new HIV infections across
the United States dropped from about 130,000 in 1985 to 50,000 in 2010, and has
plateaued at around 40,000 in recent years. Among intravenous drug users, the
infection rate has jumped from 6% to 10% since 2015.
“While the nation’s first cases of
AIDS were documented in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City in the
early 1980s, Southern states now make up 52% of new HIV diagnoses — up from 44%
in 2014. Miami ranks as the nation’s top metro area for the rate of new HIV
diagnoses, followed by Orlando, Fla., Atlanta, New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La.
“Healthcare advocates say the
structural and political challenges to combating HIV/AIDS are greater in the
rural South, where public transportation systems are lacking and schools are
less likely to educate students on prevention options.
“Laws that criminalize HIV exposure
in more than 25 states also may make people reluctant to get tested. In
Louisiana, for example, a person living with HIV who knows his or her status
and intentionally exposes another through sexual contact can face 10 years in
prison.
“If the Trump administration is
serious about eliminating HIV, many experts say, it must increase federal
funding for prevention measures and reverse several key areas of its healthcare
policy, such as efforts to gut the federal Affordable Care Act, oppose the
expansion of Medicaid and push abstinence-only sex education.
“‘Trump’s war on the Affordable Care
Act, his policies that would make it harder for people to get on or to stay on
Medicaid, work against the first step in controlling the epidemic,’ said Gregg
Gonsalves, assistant professor of epidemiology of microbial diseases at Yale
School of Public Health… ‘If you look at the map of HIV rates and pull up
another map of Medicaid expansion states, guess what?’ he added. ‘Many of the
states that didn’t extend Medicaid or [that] put work requirements into place
are the states that are struggling with HIV.’
“Carolyn McAllaster, a law professor
at Duke University and director of its Southern HIV/AIDS Strategy Initiative,
said she was thrilled to see officials home in on rural pockets of the Deep
South, which traditionally have seen little funding… Still, she said, any plan
to end HIV has to involve providing comprehensive, equitable healthcare. ‘If we
don’t expand Medicaid in our Southern states, it’s going to be very difficult
to eradicate HIV,’ she said.
“Stopping the virus’ spread should be
achievable, the vast majority of experts agree, because treatment exists:
People diagnosed with HIV can undergo antiretroviral therapy that lowers the
amount of the virus they carry to almost zero and prevents transmission to
partners. People who do not have HIV, but are at substantial risk of
contracting it, can prevent infection by taking a daily pill — a practice known
as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. [see the above map from the Kaiser Family
Foundation]
“But only about half of HIV-positive
people in the U.S. are receiving antiretroviral treatment. And PrEP is
expensive… Many diagnosed with HIV or those considered at risk face barriers —
low wages, limited transportation options, unstable housing — that compound the
challenges of getting care.
“‘HIV is an epidemic that is
entrenched in poverty and inequality,’ said Dr. Melanie Thompson, principal
investigator at the AIDS Research Consortium of Atlanta. ‘You cannot separate
the inequalities — the racism, the homophobia, the transphobia — from this
epidemic. It drives the epidemic.’…
“‘People who inject drugs — that’s
where the emerging challenge is,’ [says Dr. Hansel Tookes of the University of
Miami’s Miller School of Medicine]. ‘But the South lags behind.’... Ultimately,
many care providers say social stigma remains the trickiest hurdle to ending
the HIV epidemic… ‘We’re still not talking about sex in Mississippi,’ said Deja
Abdul-Haqq, director of organizational development at My Brother’s Keeper in
Jackson, which founded the first LGBTQ heath center in the state… ‘We’re not
talking about it in the Legislature, we’re not talking about it in the schools,
and we’re not talking about it in the church,’ she said. ‘In order to talk
about HIV, you have to talk about sex.’” Los Angeles Times, February 17th.
Increasingly, in a GOP-dominated
political scene, money for social programs, expanded medical care and care for the
poorest in the land has been cut back, with threats for further cuts to help
reduce the deficit created with the 2018 tax cut for the wealthiest Americans
and pay for a wall that a minority of right-wing Americans believe is
necessary.
I’m Peter Dekom, and I remember when
Americans were once touted as people with the biggest and most generous hearts
on earth… but that was a while ago.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Hi everyone I'm Mrs Katrina Bennett, My husband divorced me 2 years ago to live with another woman and i have tried have him back but i could not, so i try to do many things to get him back and he refuse to come back. One faithful Friday morning, I visit a forum for tips on how to get your Ex back and there i saw a lady testifying on how Dr.alusi helped her to get her husband back after he was tie down with a spell by another woman. Although I never believed in spiritual work I reluctantly tried him because I was desperate and i contact him and explain my problems to him, to my greatest surprise Dr.alusi helped me to bring back my husband after 5days and now my relationship is more perfect just as he promised. Getting your ex back permanently does not only bring back someone you love but it will also reunite your lovers feelings. My husband now treats me like a Queen and always says he loves me all the time. If you are passing through difficulties in your relationship, Doctor alusi can help solve marital problems, restore broken relationships and some other things.I can assure he's highly potent and reliable. Email him for urgent help [dr.alusistanley@gmail.com] or +2348146050373.
Post a Comment