Statement From MP Powlowski on World HIV/AIDS Day
December 1st is World AIDS Day. Covid-19 has been the most important, recurring international story for the past two years. But before COVID-19, there was a deadly, albeit slow-moving pandemic called AIDS. When I was in my 1st year at medical school, I remember seeing a sign about an unusual cluster of young men dying of pneumonia in San Francisco. I thought this strange as I hadn’t heard anything about it in my classes. Four years later however, at Toronto teaching hospitals - we were seeing significant numbers of AIDS cases.
From 1989 to 1990 I worked in Swaziland. Before I arrived in 1988 there was a survey done which found 0 cases of HIV amongst 1000 sugarcane workers who were tested. But by 1990, before I left I was finding 15% of STI cases were HIV positive, and then roughly 4 years after that, 40% of the population of Swaziland was HIV positive. Many of my colleagues that I worked with in Swaziland have since died of AIDS.
The story of the pandemic has however, in recent years, changed dramatically as a result of the development of anti-retrovirals. HIV is no longer a death sentence and many people are living full lives despite the disease. In addition these drugs, which were once thought so prohibitively expensive to ever be of much use in poor countries, are now used widely even in places like Africa.
While the development of anti-retroviral medications has been a real success story, we cannot forget the ongoing epidemic in impoverished communities throughout Africa and elsewhere. The COVID-19 pandemic is a reminder of just how vulnerable access to health care services can be. Over the last two years many people with chronic diseases like HIV/AIDS and TB have not received the consistent treatment they require. Furthermore millions of people with HIV/AIDS have yet to receive anti-retrovirals.
On this day we ought to remember the millions of people who died of the disease and those that continue to suffer from the disease, and the work that still needs to be done in improving accessibility to treatment around the world
