Around the world, 22 million people have died from AIDS-related causes ever since the epidemic began. Different breakthroughs have helped the HIV/AIDS community survive, from the creation of medication to governmental help.
Today, there is an estimate of 1.1 million people living with HIV, and the stigmas society has created against the disease.
“The rumors were; if you looked at someone with HIV you would get it” said Patricia O’Brien, advocate on the fight against AIDS for more than 20 years.
“Anyone can get it… you can get it from a needle, you can get it from a transfusion,” added O’Brien.
Many HIV-positive people struggle with getting access to the right medication.
“Thousand and thousands like me felt there was a real need to come together and mobilized and to show people living with HIV and AIDS that they are cared about,” said Craig Miller, founder of AIDS Walk Los Angeles as he explained the history of the AIDS movement.
Since its creation, AIDS Walk Los Angeles has faced a lot of difficulties. “Initially a challenge was to get people beyond the LGBT community to identify with the AIDS epidemic as something that was worthy of addressing,” Miller explained, “currently a challenge for AIDS Walk is to cause people to realize that this cause remains important. To be able to reach people into this issue at the time where Brent Kavanaugh has been confirmed to the Supreme Court and the President of the United State says outrageous and insulting discriminatory things on a weekly basis, there are a lot of problems and a lot of distractions out there¨
“In our society we have something called compulsory education where we require parents to send their kids to school and we require children to be educated so given that´s the framework it would seem, to leave sex education out of the mix negligent, and the public school definitely have a role in promoting sexual health and sex education,” added Miller as he explained the importance of having sex education as part of our school system.
1-in-4 new HIV infections occur in youth ages 13 to 24 years old.
“Take personal responsibility for protecting one’s own health and the health of one’s own sexual partner, that’s really important,¨ said Miller.
¨Another big lesson from the years of the AIDS epidemics and the AIDS Walk is that we can not necessarily rely on our government to be fair, dispassionate and wise in confronting problems including health problems that we as individuals and as community prepare to act when our government won’t and have to be prepared to take our government to task for their failures,” Miller added.
Every year thousands of people gather up in Downtown Los Angeles to fundraise and bring awareness on the fight against AIDS. “I am very aware of the capacity of our government to miss an important issue or to fail to take action that they need to take, and we as individual people and as a community, have to act on our own to protect ourselves when our government won’t,” Miller explained.
“We come a long way in confronting HIV and AIDS and the things that we did were very successful like organizing ourselves, and we need to be prepared to do it again for the next problem that comes down the pipe cause the government might again drop the bomb,” said Miller.
Nowadays, there are many organizations helping people living with HIV and AID such as APLA Health. “APLA Health is there for you,” said Miller “APLA Health has facilities all over Los Angeles County to provide health care to people who otherwise can’t afford it or couldn’t access it, to provide health care that is particularly sensitive to the needs of LGBT people, it is also a resource for dealing with all kinds of physical and mental health issues including substance abuse, healthy sex practices and the intersection between those two topics which is hugely important, most college students who acquire HIV, acquire HIV in the context of alcohol or drug use and sexual behavior”
Miller added,“APLA provides a lot of resources to help people of all ages confront both issues of addiction, sexual compulsion, and sexual health¨
In the last three decades, AIDS Walk Los Angeles has worked hand in hand with different foundations.“There are 19 to 20 organizations that benefit from this walk,“ said Bert Champagne, Event Director of AIDS Walk Los Angeles which will be held this year on October 21st in the City of Los Angeles.
“I started volunteering at the APLA food pantry, I would see people come in and you would see someone for a couple months and you could see their health declining,” said Champagne. “It is a lot of work but it is the labor of love.”