Changing faces of aids..

[TrueTiger 0]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5411881/site/newsweek/?GT1=4244

July 19 issue - The first part of Nozuko Mavuka's story is nothing unusual in sub-Saharan Africa. A young woman comes down with aches and diarrhea, and her strong limbs wither into twigs. As she grows too weak to gather firewood for her family, she makes her way to a provincial hospital, where she is promptly diagnosed with tuberculosis and AIDS. Six weeks of treatment will cure the TB, a medical officer explains, but there is little to be done for her HIV infection. It is destroying her immune system and will soon take her life. Mavuka becomes a pariah as word of her condition gets around the community. Reviled by her parents and ridiculed by her neighbors, she flees with her children to a shack in the weeds beyond the village, where she settles down to die.

In the usual version of this tragedy, the young mother perishes at 35, leaving her kids to beg or steal. But Mavuka's story doesn't end that way. While waiting to die last year, she started visiting a two-room clinic in Mpoza, a scruffy village near her home in South Africa's rural Eastern Cape. Health activists were setting up support groups for HIV-positive villagers, and Medecins sans Frontieres (also known as MSF or Doctors Without Borders) was spearheading a plan to bring lifesaving AIDS drugs to a dozen villages around the impoverished Lusikisiki district. Mavuka could hardly swallow water by the time she got her first dose of anti-HIV medicine in late January. But when I met her at the same clinic in May, I couldn't tell she had ever been sick. The clinic itself felt more like a social club than a medical facility. Patients from the surrounding hills had packed the place for an afternoon meeting, and their spirits and voices were soaring. As they stomped and clapped and sang about hope and survival, Mavuka thumbed through her treatment diary to show me how faithfully she'd taken the medicine and how much it had done for her. Her weight had shot from 104 pounds to 124, and her energy was high. "I feel strong," she said, eyes beaming. "I can fetch water, wash clothes—everything. My sons are glad to see me well again. My parents no longer shun me. I would like to find a job."

[tiger88 934]

Funny how you don't hear much about aids like you used to. I saw on cnn this weekend that the world just set a record for infections last year, 5,000,000 I think and there was also 3,000,000 deaths. I guess it's probably because most of the deaths are in 3rd world countries.

[SLAG-91 1,483]

The ones that can afford to take the drugs to attenuate the effects of HIV may end up living close to normal life spans...guess we'll see. Back in 1991 when Magic Johnson announced that he had the HIV virus, I didn't think he would even be alive in 2004, much less living a normal life.

[tiger88 934]

I think you hit the nail on the head slag. Most hollywood types are only concerned if hollywood types are dying, therefor you don't hear about it much even though the disease is growing at alarming rates.