Health Action AIDS
Town Meetings in Minnesota and Kansas Pack in the Crowds
Over 200 students, faculty, health providers, a member of Congress, and members of the community gathered on April 28, 2008 at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine for a Town Hall meeting about the continuing AIDS epidemic. The title of the meeting was It's Not Over: Innovative Approaches to the Global AIDS Epidemic. Co-sponsored by the Minnesota AIDS Project and Physicians for Human Rights, and hosted by the University's Student Chapter of Physicians for Human Rights, the town meeting was a great success. (more...)
U.S. Congresswoman Betty McCollum, D-MN, was the keynote speaker of the event. A founder of the Congressional Global Health Caucus and its current Chair, Rep. McCollum spoke passionately about the need to pay more attention to women in sub-Saharan Africa and the importance of linking family planning services to HIV care so that women are screened for HIV early, when they are pregnant, as a way to save their lives.
Rep. McCollum stated: "The women I have met with in a half dozen different countries...tell me the same thing—they got tested when they were pregnant and went to an ante-natal clinic. They got tested when they went for family planning services."
Rep. McCollum talked about the role that lack of food plays in spreading HIV infection (HIV-positive women often must exchange sex for food for their families) and in preventing its effective treatment, noting that reauthorized President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) legislation is expected to support food aid to help alleviate these problems.
She also called for 140,000 new health professionals as part of the reauthorized PEPFAR legislation, adding, "Physicians for Human Rights has been instrumental in advancing awareness of the global health care worker shortage, because it is serious and needs to be addressed." Rep. McCollum noted that are currently only 30 pediatric surgeons in all of sub-Saharan Africa, which has a population of 750 million people.
Pat Daoust, MSN, RN, Health Action AIDS Campaign Director at Physicians for Human Rights, described the special role played by PHR as a human rights- and science-based advocate for people with AIDS and health professionals.
Donna Barry, NP, MPH, Director of Advocacy at the renowned organization Partners In Health, showed slides of the desperately ill people before and after HIV treatment, and described PIH's plans to replicate its groundbreaking human-rights-focused programs to retain African health workers.
Minnesota's own AIDS problem was also a focus of the town meeting. Lorraine Teel, Executive Director of the Minnesota AIDS Project, talked about the increase in HIV among Africa-born women and the continuing epidemic among men who have sex with men; Omobosola Akinsete, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota, talked about the HIV prevalence among African-born Minnesotans and the social reasons behind these infections, including intense social stigma. Her colleague, Keith Henry, MD, spoke movingly about his African patients in Minnesota: "It is so rewarding to treat patients who are often extremely ill when they present with HIV initially, and then be able to improve their lives and health dramatically." Dr. Henry noted that many of his African patients in Minnesota are nursing students themselves.
The University of Minnesota's newspaper, the Minnesota Daily, featured an article on the town meeting in its April 29 issue. PHR also met with members of the editorial board of the Minnesota Star Tribune after the town meeting; the Star Tribune printed a letter to the editor from Dr. Akinsete (who is pictured below) on April 27, entitled "Improve AIDS programming and save Africans".
On April 30, PHR's Pat Daoust held another talk on global AIDS at Kansas University in Kansas City, KS. The meeting included about 50 health professionals. PHR met later that day with several members of the Kansas City Star's editorial board, resulting in a very well-stated editorial in the Star.
If you attended the Town Meeting on April 28, we would love to hear from you. Please send us your thoughts, comments, and any feedback you may have.
Get Involved: Health Action AIDS will be hosting Town Meetings similar to the one at UMN all across the United States. If you or your institution are interested in working closely with PHR staff to help build the health professional movement, please contact Jirair Ratevosian, US Field Coordinator for Health Action AIDS at (617) 301-4200 or by email at jratevosian [at] phrusa [dot] org.
Bottom row: Bosola Akinsete, MD MPH; Keith Henry, MD; Donna Barry, MSN MPH MIA; Rep. Betty McCollum.
Rep. McCollum was the keynote speaker; PHR’s medical Student Chapter helped organize the event.
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