New York Times Profiles Dr. Jean Pape, Haiti’s Fight Against AIDS
Dr. Jean Pape, a physician working in Haiti, has "found enough ... [hope] to confront one of the world's highest AIDS rates," the New York Times reports. Haiti was recently awarded $25 million from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, making it the first country in the Western Hemisphere to have so far received such a grant. International officials called the work of the GHESKIO Center, which Pape directs, and other clinics in Haiti "a model for how poor countries with few resources can combat AIDS" and the other diseases that often afflict HIV-positive people, the Times reports. The Global Fund money will be used to bolster treatment and prevention services in the country, which has an estimated 250,000 HIV-positive people out of a population of seven million. The grant will provide approximately 1,200 more people with HIV/AIDS treatment. Pape said that his group, which will receive part of the Global Fund grant, plans to educate government-run clinic staff. "Haiti's work has shown conclusively that you cannot use a lack of infrastructure as an excuse not to treat patients," Anil Soni, an adviser to Richard Feachem, the Global Fund's executive director, said. "We want to show you can adapt what is being done in poor setings to stabilize patients. That is a lesson for the world," he added (Gonzalez, New York Times, 12/22).
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