The AIDS support group

Had a nice day working in the office all day - mostly helping a couple people get in their proposals for the Asia/Pacific AIDS conference before the deadline tomorrow. These kinds of seemingly boring routines can be a gold mine for anthropologists, so it's still quite interesting to me.

Then tonight was something special - attending my first meeting of the AIDS support group. 12 people attending, all living with HIV. Some have an official AIDS diagnosis; a few are taking antiretrovirals, some not - mainly because due to the rationing of the free medications, you have to have a T4 cell count under 200 (which is quite low) to get access to them. Which is interesting in itself of course. I did an HIV 101 discussion and they were transfixed - their access to info is fairly limited. The GC staff know more but a refresher doesn't hurt them either.

I explained how reverse transcriptase and protease work in HIV replication - and how these are the two things that antiretrovirals work against. To explain protease I ran into the next room and came back with a pair of scissors, pretending to cut myself to show how T4 cells infected with HIV use protease to disassemble themselves to make new HIV unless there's a protease inhibitor. Folks wanted an explanation of resistance and don't ask me why, but what came to mind as an allegory was shooting rabbits in your yard and if you don't kill them all, the ones who don't get shot are probably the smarter ones so their baby rabbits will be smarter and harder to kill. They got it, so I guess it worked!

It was very interesting to see what kinds of questions they asked. Some had to do with injecting heroin, which is sadly really on the rise here and a major engine behind the explosive growth of HIV infections. Others had to do with things they'd read in the newspaper or had been told by quack doctors about "cures" for HIV/AIDS. Very frustrating. I talked about the difference between such false hopes and true hopes - like the potential for effective integrase inhibitors or CD4 blockers that could even represent a cure someday in the future. That was helpful to people.

They are very brave - they know that they have some serious issues to face with their HIV infection, but they are also committed to taking steps to protect their health. Though it's frustrating to see how many of them smoke still - smoking is such a problem here.