Miami Herald - August 6, 2008
Jane Bussey, jbussey@MiamiHerald.com

Molokomme's journey to break her country's denial of the epidemic led her through a spiritual awakening, into Sanerela+ -- the South African Network of Religious Leaders Living With or Personally Affected by HIV or AIDS -- and now to the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City. Sanerela+ is one of the 25 community-based organizations honored with Red Ribbon Awards this year for their work in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Whereas scientists and medical researchers once were the rock stars of the HIV/AIDS fraternity, another collection of folks has taken their place as leading lights of the Mexico City conference.

Among the newest stars are people living with HIV or AIDS, advocates pushing for prevention and treatment, activists seeking more drug therapy and those hoping to end the discrimination, stigma and homophobia that the epidemic has prompted.

The reason is clear: A cure or a vaccination still lies in the future, and these activists deal with challenges in the present.

S. FLORIDA GROUPS

In South Florida, HIV/AIDS activist groups have also sprung, some as early as 1983, before doctors understood the disease.

"These new groups around the world can only help -- to educate, get new medicines -- especially in Africa, which is so far behind where we are now," said Terry de Carlo. He is spokesman for Care Network, a South Florida nonprofit group that started in 1983 and today serves 8,000 men, women and children with testing, medicines, counseling and food banks.

Charles Martin, of the South Beach AIDS Project, also welcomed the new groups.

'NEW MOVEMENTS'

"I believe what happens in Africa will affect what happens here. New movements can create pressure to combat the disease there, and make it better here," he said.

But he worries that when the world's attention turns to Africa and other nations, it might lose its focus on America.

"We have communities that are struggling just as much, are just as decimated here," he said.

Martin's group tests about 2,000 persons a year for HIV, helps them get into therapy, and educates community leaders.

At the end of last year, an estimated 33 million people worldwide were living with HIV -- 22 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa -- and an estimated 2.7 million had been newly infected in 2007.

There is good news in the AIDS effort.

"For the first time, fewer people are dying of AIDS and fewer people are becoming infected," said Peter Piot, the executive director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS.

There's bad news, too. The global goal to provide healthcare to all those with HIV/AIDS hasn't yet been reached. "We are not on course to meet universal access targets," said Pedro Cahn, the president of the International AIDS Society and one of the organizers of the conference. "It's time for nations to live up to their commitments."

In addition, 86 countries still criminalize sex between consenting men while other communities deny jobs or education to those with HIV/AIDS.

At the conference's opening ceremony Sunday evening, attended by luminaries in the effort against HIV/AIDS as well as United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Mexican President Felipe Calderon, the U.N. Development Program honored the 25 groups helping communities with the disease, including Sanerela+.

EDUCATED FAMILY

Although South Africa has 5.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS, Molokomme never thought that it could hit her close-knit, educated family. Then her father, a retiree, started losing weight. He died in 2002. The next year, her stepmother died of AIDS and in 2004, her brother.

"I left my life," Molokomme said. Life as she knew it also left her. She found that she no longer could work as an educator. Even as her brother and sister denied that the disease had caused the deaths, she underwent a spiritual awakening and took a job with Sanerela+.

"I join prayer meetings. I drive around to communities, to marginalized areas to give the support we can," she said, adding that she's constantly fighting "silence, shame, denial, discrimination, inaction and misaction."

Groups such as the one she works with are on the march against HIV/AIDS.

'NEXT GENERATION'

"We realize now that the world is going to be living with AIDS for the next generation even if we find a vaccine in five to 15 years," said Jeffrey O'Malley, director of the HIV/AIDS Group in the U.N. Development Program.

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