By John Hayden
The fight against HIV/AIDS is its fifth decade. The first 15 years were devastating, but the next 15 were encouraging. Now, we avoid stagnating.
To know where we’re going, we have to know where we came from, and the World AIDS Museum in Fort Lauderdale is where the pandemic’s history is on display for people to see, read, and learn.
The tide began turning in the mid-1990s with the emergence of the first proven and approved drugs: AZT. Besides being a game changer in the LGBTQ community, it altered the entire pharmaceutical landscape.
“They managed to change the way the FDA approved drugs,” World AIDS Museum Executive Director Dr. Raquel Lopes told OutClique. “It usually takes 12 years for a drug to get through. It took 25 months for this to go through.”
Unfortunately, getting the drug approved was just the beginning of getting it to patients. Not all doctors could prescribe AZT. There was an incredible amount of paperwork, to the point where it was nearly a prohibitive hurdle.
On display at the museum is a doctor’s stamp from the early days of prescribing. Few pharmacies were even able to fill prescriptions. Beyond that, insurance coverage was challenging, as many health insurance companies would just drop patients rather than pay the high prescription prices.
Today, we have PrEP, which is covered by many insurances and subsidized by health organizations. Where AZT was tough to obtain, required a strict dosing regime, and often led to secondary medical issues, PrEP operates differently.
“The drugs attack at different stages,” Lopes says. “The more stages a drug can attack the more likely they can stop the replication of the virus.”
Another big step was the approval of the needle exchange programs. According to Lopes, if a person is the first to use a clean needle, then they are protecting themselves.
“It’s everybody after you that you have to worry about,” she says.
Going forward, Lopes says reaching out to women is crucial.
“Women are not readily taking PrEP and it’s offered,” she says. “You’re going to talk about an increase of HIV in various communities, then we need to talk to women about PrEP. It’s about controlling your own body and protecting yourself. If you trust your partner or not, things happen.”
Stigma still radiates from even the mention of HIV/AIDS. For awhile, people were focused on the four Hs: homosexuals, Haitians, heroin addicts, and hemophiliacs.
South Florida continues to be an epicenter of the crisis, often leading the nation in new infections. Lopes says that makes the World AIDS Museum’s work all the more important.
“That’s why we need places like this and why we need to continue the conversations,” she says. “This is a virus that is pesky and changes. It doesn’t conform the way we wish it would so we could eradicate it. The more people who think they don’t need to worry about it, the more people who become positive.”
