By Christian Mignot
Daily Bruin Contributor
The annual World AIDS Day commemorated the 21.8 million people
that have died of the disease since the epidemic began two decades
ago.
Such a day provides people the chance to put their own mortality
into perspective, but most fail to realize this constant evaluation
of life is taken daily by about 36.1 million HIV patients across
the world.
No one knows this better than Michael Kearns, one of
Hollywood’s first openly gay and publicly HIV-positive actor,
who has dedicated his life since 1985 to lobbying for compassion
and understanding of the disease.
“When you are HIV-positive, it’s like having a bomb
ticking within you,” Kearns said at Friday’s lunch
discussion at the University Catholic Center. “It definitely
has taught me to live my life by the day and appreciate the life I
have.”
Diagnosed in 1989, Kearns, 51, believes he is lucky to have
survived so long with the illness, as most of his close friends
have had their lives cut short by the disease. Supported by a daily
diet of 21 pills, he has learned that life is what one makes of it
in the time one has. If he died tomorrow, he would not feel
cheated, he said.
“After so many of my friends passed away, I have come to
see death for its beauty,” Kearns said. “Death can
provide release for pain and sometimes is the only way for a person
to find peace.”
According to statistics released by the United Nations Program
on HIV/AIDS, 5.3 million people were infected with the disease and
3 million died in 2000. The epidemic is spreading most rapidly in
Eastern Europe, where growth rate has increased 15 folds over the
last three years, while in South Africa, one in every five adults
is HIV-positive.
“HIV/AIDS is unequivocally the most devastating disease we
have ever faced, and it will get worse before it gets
better,” Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, said in a
statement that appeared on the UNAIDS’ Web site.
Medication to slow down the progress of the disease exists, but
research has not found a cure. Any drugs existing at the moment are
expensive and unavailable for widespread distribution in
third-world countries.
According to Oscar De La O, executive director for Bienestar, an
organization providing AIDS education and services to the
community, infection rates are increasing rapidly in Los Angeles
among Latino and African-American communities, while it is
decreasing among the gay white male community.
“Cultural and socio-economic barriers exist that ruin the
effectiveness of AIDS education,” De La O said. “People
are not accessing treatment early enough; many are illegal
immigrants who are afraid of seeking medical care, others may
simply be hindered by something simple like the language
barrier.”
The current lack of education may be associated with the fact
that AIDS awareness has somewhat disappeared out of the public eye
in the United States ““ something the driving forces behind
Saturday’s World AIDS Day hope to rectify, Kearns said.
Kearns attributes this disappearance with the fact that people
have gotten used to hearing about the disease and would rather not
deal with it any longer. Furthermore, he said, the youth of today,
as opposed to the early ’90s, aren’t practicing safe
sex and aren’t paying enough attention to the warnings given
about HIV.
Organizations across the globe used World AIDS Day to call for
more education and greater support for their efforts within
communities at risk.
“We must mobilize the entire community, from elected
officials to social organizations, behind our efforts,” De La
O said. “Only then can we break the barriers which until now
have hindered the progress of HIV/AIDS prevention.”