San Francisco Chronicle - December 2, 2007
Carolyn Jones, carolynjones@sfchronicle.com.

"Anybody who's active in the health care profession has to be political because the problems, particularly HIV, have become so huge," said Michael Ehlert, president of the American Medical Student Association, at a rally on the steps of San Francisco City Hall to commemorate the 19th World AIDS Day.

About 150 medical students marched from Japantown, where they were holding a conference, to City Hall to draw attention to the global fight against AIDS.

They want to see a $20 billion increase in AIDS funding in the United States, $8 billion spent on training and retaining health care workers overseas, and the elimination of programs advocating abstinence.

But probably the most urgent issue is the "brain drain" of talented health care workers abroad, Ehlert said. Because of a health care worker shortage in the United States, medical students from around the world move here to study and practice, leaving their own countries bereft of medical professionals.

"There are more Ethiopian doctors working in Chicago than there are in Ethiopia," said Vishal Patel, the association's global AIDS fellow.

The solution is to create more medical schools in the United States and to improve working conditions in hospitals and clinics abroad, Patel said. Some hospitals, especially in Africa, are so short-staffed and underfunded that doctors and nurses routinely contract the diseases they're treating.

Basim Khan, a medical student at UCLA, just returned from a 45-day stint at a hospital in South Africa, where he said HIV has "taken out an entire generation."

"The medicine is there and it's free, but there aren't enough health care workers to reach all the patients that need it," he said. "And there's no political will to change that."

Khan said he'll return to South Africa once he finishes school. Meanwhile, he's fighting to expand training and protection of health care workers here and overseas.

Michelle Smith, a second-year medical student at UC Davis, said public education about AIDS is the most important way to fight the disease.

"As a future health care provider, we have an obligation to advocate for our patients," she said. "Not just one-on-one, but to fight for political reform."

Worldwide, more than 25 million people have died of AIDS since the epidemic began in 1981. About 39 million people are now living with AIDS, according to the Global Media AIDS Initiative.

"AIDS is the worst pandemic we've ever seen," Ehlert said. "There is inexpensive, accessible treatment for HIV that needs to get to the people who need it, and that's what we're fighting for."

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