The nearly forgotten plague

Source: The Globe and Mail

Cutting-edge AIDS medications have lengthened patients' lives and given many a better existence than they would have had 10 years ago, but these advances have helped push the disease out of mainstream consciousness. Health-care workers point to continuing problems that need attention: 'premature aging,' lack of bed space and failure to make sure everyone - especially the poor - gets medicine

ROD MICKLEBURGH March 15, 2008

VANCOUVER -- In the lobby of the gleaming Dr. Peter Centre for patients with AIDS, a man of indeterminate age is moaning.

"If I go out there, I'll die," he says to himself.

Another man shuffles past, his face pinched and gaunt. He looks 75 years old but isn't.

Later, a third man, Tom Griffin, came into a room to talk. Or rather, he was wheeled in by his friend, Spencer Dane. He has difficulty keeping his head up. His voice is weak. Conversation often drops off from fatigue and emotion. And this is a good day for the once-vigorous restaurateur, Mr. Dane said.

It's a face of AIDS not seen much any more. As breakthrough medications lengthen lives, saving tens of thousands of infected Canadians from a terrible, premature death, the news media have moved on to other stories. But a visit to Dr. Peter's, or a talk with anyone on the treatment front lines, is a sobering reminder that Old Man AIDS, the deadly viral trickster, hasn't gone away. People are still being infected, still suffering and still dying.

The picture is not pretty. Although more people than ever before are living with AIDS and HIV, many are far from healthy. Woeful gaps in care remain, between those stable enough to maintain life-prolonging antiretroviral therapy and those who remain on the wild side. Despite the best efforts of dedicated outreach workers and physicians, 40 per cent of the 1,436 British Columbians who died of HIV-related causes from 1997 to 2005 made no attempt to access the drugs, even though they were free.

Another 2,500 individuals in B.C. are estimated to be HIV-positive without knowing it, greatly increasing the risk of passing the lethal virus on to others. (...)

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