Organizations hoping to bring AIDS to light
By Daily Press staff
The fight against AIDS boils down to two basics: Money and care.
Today, in honor of World AIDS Day, two Santa Monica-based organizations are individually doing their parts to provide those basics and bring one of the world’s biggest health crises to the forefront locally.
Each year since 1998, the first of December has served as a day to bring messages of compassion, hope, solidarity and understanding about AIDS to every country in the world, organizers say. Recognized and supported by the World Health Assembly, the United Nations and numerous sovereign nations, World AIDS Day is the only international day of coordi-nated action against AIDS.
The U.S. premiere screening of the documentary film “AIDS Treatment: Reaching the People?” will be shown for free tonight at the Laemmle Theatre, 1332 Second St., at 7 p.m. The film documents the lives of patients and medical teams in HIV/AIDS treatment programs in Malawi, Thail-and and Guatemala. The premise of the film is that six million people urgently need treatment to survive. Doctors discuss what it will take for HIV/AIDS medicines to reach them in time.
Doctors Without Borders/- Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been caring for people living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries since the mid-1990s. The first MSF ARV programs began in 2000 in Thailand and South Africa.
MSF field volunteers Dr. Gildon Beall, who worked in Thailand and China; Dr. Deborah Milligan, who worked in Kenya, and Dr. Rick Hamner, who worked in Malawi, will all be on hand to discuss the film following its showing. KPPC’s Talk of the City host Kitty Felde will moderate.
The film will also air at 3 p.m. at the Freud Playhouse at Charles Young Drive and Hilgard Avenue on the UCLA campus. The discussion will be moderated by professor Roger Bohman. The event is free and open to the public. To RSVP, call (310) 593-2800 or go to www.doctor-swithoutborders.org.
Also in recognition of World AIDS Day, Santa Monica-based Children Affected by AIDS Foundation (CAAF) has announced it will give more than $600,000 in grants next year to 58 organizations spanning 22 states.
The grants, ranging from $2,000 to $25,000, are made to non-profit agencies to assist children in the areas of basic needs, including food, transportation and clothing; care, including medical care, mental health counseling and daycare; and social and recreational programs such as summer camp, special outings and parties. In recognition of the growing AIDS pandemic, CAAF also makes targeted grant awards for international AIDS initiatives.
One of the recipients locally is Caring for Children & Families with AIDS, based in LA. Caring for Children & Families with AIDS and the Therapeutic Recreation & Arts for Kids Program provide children with recreational, social and artistic activities designed to promote normalcy in their childhood.
CAAF was founded in Los Angeles in 1993 by Joe Cristina, a Mattel, Inc. executive whose desire to help children was inspired by the outpouring of support he received when he disclosed his own HIV-positive status. CAAF is the sole organization in the United States that addresses the daily needs of children infected with or affected by HIV/AIDS. While other pediatric AIDS organizations search for the cure, CAAF is dedicated to caring for children who are infected or affected by this epidemic now.
MSF currently provides antiretroviral treatment to more than 23,000 patients in a total of 27 countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Guinea, Honduras, Indonesia, Kenya, Laos, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, Peru, Rwanda, South Africa, Thailand, Uganda, Ukraine, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 1, 2004. Read the original PDF.