U of T’s response to AIDS is finally here. The launch of the Centre for International Health’s HIV/AIDS Initiative for Africa took place last Friday at the Rotman School of Management.
The initiative is to be based on a collaboration between various departments at U of T and African NGOs, governments and universities. According to David Zakus, the director of the Centre, this initiative has been a long time coming. “We’re the largest university with a large medical school and yet our response has been really inadequate and wanting,” said Zakus. “We decided that we should pull our resources together.”
In Africa, 29 million people are currently living with HIV/AIDS. Thirteen million of them are children under 15. In the developing world, only 300,000 people have access to treatment. “We’re here to address these injustices,” said Zakus. “We want to use our amazing resources at the university…and make a difference.”
The panelists admitted that U of T has been in need of a change. Ted Myers, a professor with the Faculty of Medicine, pointed to the lack of courses in HIV/AIDS and international health at the university as well as the difficulty Africans face in continuing their education at U of T. “We must make our university more accessible to people from Africa,” said Myers. “We must work to break down barriers at U of T.”
The launch featured speeches from members of the initiative as well as African music and dance. Nigerian singer Beautiful Nubia gave a stirring performance and a demonstration of dance, accompanied by drums and song, to close the event.
Present were representatives from such areas as the departments of infectious diseases, anthropology and public health sciences. Although many were accomplished academics, they stressed that even students have a role to play in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Kadia Petricca, a fourth-year Biology and Anthropology student, assured the audience that although the issue was overwhelming, “we as students at U of T do have a pivotal role to play…this is not only a university initiative but an individual initiative.” Petricca urged students to get involved in the various activist clubs at U of T and to try to make a difference in their own way.
The speakers presented their own varied approaches to tackling the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Some, such as Melanie Campbell, a first-year medical student, discussed the problem of patents, which has made it difficult to export AIDS-fighting drugs from the West to the developing countries. Other presenters, such as anthropologist Richard Lee, stressed internal factors, such as gender inequality and a lack of trained personnel as causes of the crisis.
Members of the scientific community also presented their findings. Kevin Kain, from the Centre for Travel and Tropical Medicine, explained the negative impact of HIV drugs upon malaria, which in turn can worsen HIV. Rupert Kaul, from the Department of Infectious Diseases, discussed his current project to treat African sex workers with antibiotics to prevent the spread of the disease.
Despite their good intentions, the panelists recognized that their work can only do so much. “We’re not going to make changes, it’s Africans who are going to have to do it themselves,” said Orbinski. “Outside impositions never work; 2,000 years of history has demonstrated this.”
This doesn’t let Westerners off the hook though, cautioned Orbinski. He chastised the West for their denial of the crisis and questioned how, in this age, the epidemic could have reached such massive proportions. Orbinski even went so far as to compare it to the Black Plague of the Middle Ages.
Despite the serious nature of the launch and its subject matter, the event ended on a jovial note. Many audience members took advantage of the invitation to get out of their chairs and danced to the rhythm of African drums.
