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INSIDE AFRICA

World AIDS Day

Aired December 2, 2006 - 12:30:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

FEMI OKE, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Femi Oke, and this is INSIDE AFRICA, your weekly look at life and news on the continent. This week, in honor of World AIDS Day, we want to share the stories of some of the heroes who are battling HIV/AIDS on the continent and attending to the victims who have nowhere else to go.
Realities of this epidemic is staggering. In 25 years, HIV/AIDS has killed some 25 million people. Every eight seconds, a person is infected with HIV somewhere in the world. And while sub-Saharan Africa has just over 10 percent of the world's population, it has more than 60 percent of the globe's HIV-positive patients -- that's about 26 million people.

Among the victims of this epidemic are millions of children, who are either infected or orphaned.

One man took it upon himself to help as many as he could. Here is Dr. Sanjay Gupta with his story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FATHER ANGELO D'AGOSTINO: Hear our prayers and be merciful ...

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Not too long ago, HIV was a death sentence for children like these:

D'AGOSTINO: (inaudible) cradle in your love.

GUPTA: This man helped to change all that. He's a priest from Providence, Rhode Island.

I first met Father Angelo D'Agostino last year. He's known here as Father Dag, and for more than 14 years he's watched over the youngest victims of Africa's AIDS epidemic.

D'AGOSTINO: We used to have two or three deaths a month, funerals right here at the cemetery here. And now funerals are very rare occasions.

GUPTA (on camera): It's unbelievable work. How did you get inspired to do it in the first place?

D'AGOSTINO: No inspiration, it was a matter of necessity.

GUPTA (voice over): Father Dag trained as an Air Force surgeon before becoming a Jesuit priest, and later became a psychiatrist. But nothing could truly prepare him or anyone for this.

D'AGOSTINO: You find a child on the street, and nobody wants to take it, because culturally they'll take a child in if it's the same tribe, but if you don't know what tribe he comes from, nobody wants him. So what do you do? You have to set up an orphanage.

GUPTA: In the beginning, there were three children. He called it Nyumbani. In Swahili, it means "home." Soon there were would be 100 orphans living with HIV and a community center serving more than 2,000 people. It went beyond food and shelter. Father Dag pushed for affordable, life-saving AIDS medications.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NIH: He was somebody who could get you to do anything, and it was very difficult to say no to him.

GUPTA: And when Kenyan government schools refused to allow HIV- positive children in, Father Dag sued, and he won.

D'AGOSTINO: Now, they're living to be teenagers, which we never expected. So, it's very hopeful.

GUPTA: Father Dag passed on a legacy of hope. He died of a heart attack just a few days ago. He was 80.

FAUCI: He started the movement of going out there and where it's happening in the trenches, and bringing state-of-the art AIDS care for people who need it.

GUPTA: At a time when so little attention was being paid to Africa and AIDS, Father Angelo D'Agostino was there. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

OKE: And Father Dag's outreach program now serves almost 3,000 families.

If you would like to help the orphanage, you can go the Web site at www.nyumbani.org. That's www.nyambani.org.

You might want to keep a pencil and paper handy for the rest of this show. We are going to have a lot of information for you.

Now, experts all agree that the best way to fight the disease is to prevent it, and this year, media outlets in more than two dozens countries are teaming up to change the status quo.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Imagine the possibility of an HIV-free generation. It begins with you.

OKE: It's a message that is now resonating across Africa. This unprecedented effort aims to build awareness against a pandemic that has hit this continent harder than any place else on earth. The two-minute long public service announcement kicked off a World AIDS Day Friday. It's part of an agreement by TV and radio stations in 25 African countries to dedicate about one full hour each day to HIV/AIDS programming. Much of it is focused on hope and on changing minds. The one thing experts say really works.

SETH KALICHMAN, PSYCHOLOGIST: We really have to talk about mobilizing communities for changing a mind-set. Changing a mind-set opens the door then to prevention intervention.

OKE: U.N. aide says that significant behavioral changes, such as the use condoms, fewer partners and starting sex later in life, have already dropped HIV rates in Zimbabwe, Kenya and Burkina Faso. But there's still much work to be done. While the HIV/AIDS epidemic is leveling off in most of sub-Saharan Africa, the rates in southern Africa remain extremely high. The new five-year media campaign is financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Kaiser Family Foundation, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and the Coca Cola Africa Foundation.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

OKE: Yes, you can never have too many foundations. What a great job they're all doing together.

But even behavioral changes cannot beat the effectiveness of a vaccine. Scientists are still searching, but some of the strongest clues might be found in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. Here again is Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: Nancy Endegawa's (ph) life has been filled with the unexpected.

(on camera): You don't have HIV. Do you think that that's a miracle? Are you surprised by that?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was surprised. It's a miracle from God. I could not have expected that.

GUPTA (voice-over): This past January, her husband died of AIDS. For more than two decades, she worked as a prostitute to support her family. By her own admission, she has been exposed to the virus thousands of times through unprotected sex, yet somehow she never got infected.

(on camera): You started in 1981, doing this sort of work. How many women from that -- that are still alive?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The women who started, they are not here. All of them have died.

GUPTA (voice over): Nancy should have also died, years ago, but she, along with over 100 other prostitutes in this Nairobi slum, are not only living, but are, experts say, resistant to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People like Nancy show us that there is a way in which we can protect the immune system. I mean, the body from infection by the virus. We just have to learn from Nancy how the body does it. Through that, design a vaccine, that would sort of stimulate the same kind of response in the general population.

GUPTA: Doctors and researchers look to this Nairobi slum, specifically to the bodies of a few dozen women, searching for clues for the ultimate prevention, a vaccine. Could they find them? Did they find them?

DR. RICHARD LESTER, UNIV. OF MANITOBA: You would expect that the longer someone had been doing sex work, the more likely they would be to be HIV-infected. It's just the opposite. The reverse was true.

GUPTA: Lester says if a woman was not infected during the first three years of sex work, they were 10 times less likely to ever become infected with HIV. For some reason, repeated exposure to the virus made the immune system stronger.

DR. WALTER JAOKO, KENYA AIDS CONTROL PROJECT: A vaccine was plausible from the information that we had.

GUPTA: Researches begin testing a vaccine based on what they learned from Nancy and the other Nairobi prostitutes. When HIV was first detected 25 years ago, most everyone thought we'd have a vaccine by now. Yet a vaccine still remains well out of reach.

DR. SETH BERKELEY, INTL. AIDS VACCINE INSTITUTE: It is such a stealth, you know, virus that it really has figured out how to get around the immune system.

GUPTA: It changes and mutates. The HIV virus circulating in Asia is different than the one in the U.S., which is different than the one in Africa.

JAOKO: We've learned a lot from the time of the beginning of the vaccine trials. But there is still a lot to be learned.

GUPTA: And more was learned from Nancy Endegawa (ph), but still not enough to create that ultimate vaccine. It was less than 30 percent effective, and the science community thought it was too risky and too costly to proceed.

BERKELEY: The issue was, can we turn that into a vaccine that is going to be easy to use, that is going to protect against all strains and is going to be cost-effective? And that's really the challenge for us.

GUPTA: And so, the hunt continues.

(on camera): Do you think that they're going to find a vaccine?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. They can find.

GUPTA: Do you think you, your body might help them?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If my body can be of helping people, I can - even I can be happy.

GUPTA (voice over): Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Nairobi.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

OKE: And I'm delighted to say that Nancy Endegawa (ph) is still HIV- negative, and I also spoke to Sanjay this week. He said she is amazing, because doctors from all the over world come and prod her and poke her and test her, and she is still as gracious as ever. Thank you very much, Nancy.

Now, when we come back, from prominence to poverty. A look at how one South Africa doctor's decision is changing the lives of thousands. Don't go away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi. I'm Brian. I'm from Malawi. And I'm 15 years old. I'm HIV-positive.

OKE: Brian is among the first children to be treated in Malawi's new pediatric HIV clinic. The clinic opened last month with the help of the American charity, the Abbott Fund and Baylor College of Medicine, and it has already had an impact.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I grow up, I want to be a doctor and help the children.

OKE: Brian is among some 83,000 children reported to be infected by HIV/AIDS in Malawi. So far, the new clinic supports 1,100 children, but it hopes to treat 2,000 by the end of next year. Hopefully, it is only the beginning. Baylor and the Malawi Ministry of Health plan to take a training program to district hospitals around the nation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm Carlo Spannoli (ph). I'm a doctor working in Zimbabwe at Louisa Guidotti Hospital and all of the connected projects for the AIDS patients.

In the last 10 years, I've been in Zimbabwe, because I've been called there to - to help, particularly in the field of maternal and child health.

Here is a little hospital, 177 beds, always overcrowded, because we have a lot of flow of patients, a lot of children and others.

I'll tell you that dying from AIDS is a cruel death. It takes many years and a lot of suffering, up and downs, but when the downs are serious, there is a lot of suffering and pain, you know. So, they take time to die, the patients.

We focus on the treatment of mothers, young mothers, because, you know, very often these patients are caring not only for their children, but even for the children of their brothers and sisters, who have already died from AIDS.

We have in Zimbabwe 1.2 million orphans, who are very often going to have a bad life. They're abused, they're beaten, they are very often (inaudible) even if they are in the care of some of the relatives. We give them a better life in an environment which is resembling a family.

When we started the antiretroviral treatment, and after a few months, people could see the results of a therapy, people are coming back to life.

I feel happy because, you know, it is a little help that without that little help, there would be more death. The (inaudible) who are deprived of everything material, and very often also spiritually, and they are the ones who represent the face of God in front of us. With our hands, we can do the work of God in the world. So we're better to do this work then with (inaudible), you know, then you feel happy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OKE: We go from Zimbabwe now to South Africa. Alphonso Van Marsh has the story of another doctor who is fighting the odds.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALPHONSO VAN MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Dr. Wenga Suisa (ph) used to have a thriving private practice outside of Johannesburg, but he traded that for this Spartan office in a public hospital in South Africa's rural northwest. His patients not city slickers, but the poor, infected or affected by HIV and AIDS.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would like to make it political, you know. But (inaudible) many of our people die.

VAN MARSH: Suisa (ph) moved to town hospital in 2004, to set up the region's first antiretroviral drug program, which gives life-prolonging medication to some 2,000 people with HIV. But even in this remote outpost, it's hard to separate politics from the medical reality of HIV/AIDS. More than 5 million South Africans have HIV. Yet the country's health minister advocates eating foods like garlic and lemons to help fight the onset of AIDS. This in a country where less than a quarter million people are on antiretroviral drugs or ARVs.

So, under the framed picture of the often ridiculed health minister, Suisa (ph) instructs his overworked staff to stress nutrition and ARVs to patients. Patients like Mariam Ganabo. She found out she was HIV-positive last year.

MARIAM GANABO, HIV POSITIVE: I don't know where else I would go. Without Dr. Suisa (ph) and the clinic, we'd have nothing, no one to assist us, she tells me.

VAN MARSH: Nationwide, the percentage of South Africans living with HIV/AIDS is about 18 percent. When you come to rural areas like Taung, that percentage goes down just a little bit, but Dr. Suisa (ph) says that the impact of the disease is harder felt here.

Most rural families have just one breadwinner, who often travels to the city for work, and when that breadwinner returns home with HIV, the whole family is financially and physically compromised, often shunned by their community.

Living here has not been easy for Suisa (ph) either. Aside from a fast food restaurant, there is little for a single doctor to do but work.

ONKEMETSE KABASIA, CEO, TAUNG HOSPITAL: He is really a good doctor who - who has sacrificed a lot.

VAN MARSH: When 65-year old Suisa (ph) was in medical school, HIV/AIDS was not in the curriculum. So he studied up. Today, he says, he's making the difference.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Of course, there's a number of patients who tell me that Suisa (ph), you know, when I came here, I was almost dead. Can you see me now? I'm alive.

VAN MARSH: Alive, thanks to a doctor who gave up a comfortable urban life to help those in need.

Alphonso Van Marsh, CNN, Taung, South Africa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

OKE: Could there be to come on INSIDE AFRICA? Oh, yes, we have a jam-packed show for you this week. We will be exporting comfort and care, and what one U.S. hospital is doing to make life better for patients in South Africa. That's all coming up after the break, so stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hospital (inaudible) is in northern Uganda, in a district called Gulu (ph). It is now 100-bed hospital, serving a population of about 300,000, and (inaudible) people (inaudible) are very overcrowded.

Some of them have to walk for long distances as long as 12 hours to get access to health care. And we're only two doctors working in that hospital, and it's indeed very hard for us.

When you break the news to them, it is very devastating to them (inaudible). Many times, it's the bread-earners in the family, the mothers and fathers of families who are affected by this disease.

I feel the voice of people, especially health care workers, can bring about (inaudible) to help service delivery to the people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My late friend, (inaudible). My own mother died of HIV/AIDS at a time when ARVs were very inaccessible. It gives me this desire to work with other people, to be able to save more lives. I feel we can't have health without linking it to the human rights of the people, because it's their right to have access to quality healthcare that is accessible in their reach. Everyone can play a role, ranging from the policymakers, the medical students, the healthcare workers. People living with HIV/AIDS, it is a (inaudible) culture changes, and the world would be a better place.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OKE: If you would like to help, you can go to the Web site of Physicians for Human Rights at www.phrusa.org. www.phrusa.org.

Now one hospital in the U.S. is trying to help HIV-positive people to at least see the world as a hopeful place. Now, they're trying to bring that message to South Africa. Dan Lothian has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Boston, Massachusetts is around 8,000 miles away from Port Elizabeth, South Africa. But the cities are very close when it comes to helping people who are living with HIV and AIDS.

NYAMEKA MAFANI, SPECIAL PROJECT COORDINATOR: We want to instill the understanding that if you are HIV- positive, it's not the end of the world.

CATHY MORALES, BOSTON LIVING CENTER: We help people live with HIV. We help people live healthier, we give them hope, we give them ...

LOTHIAN: Cathy Morales heads the Boston Living Center. For 16 years, it has been providing HIV-positive people with education, counseling, wellness programs, hot meals, job trading and a safe place to relax.

JOE LEMIEUX: I think it really helps people build their lives and helps people from isolating.

LOTHIAN Joe Lemieux says HIV nearly destroyed his life.

LEMIEUX: I remember in the early stages, we used to keep diaries and write down how many days we were sick, and there were hardly any days that I wasn't.

LOTHIAN: But he says here, he was placed on a healthy, positive course.

Now, this center is about to be cloned, in a way, going international to Port Elizabeth, where 29 percent of the population is infected with HIV/AIDS.

Officials from South Africa recently traveled to Boston as part of their homework, hearing first hand from the people who have been helped.

THEMBI ZUNGU, SOUTH AFRICA PARTNERS: Now, we're learning from this program that with support, you can even live longer. That is why it is important to have a program like this.

LOTHIAN: Center officials are now in Port Elizabeth, helping to guide the early process of planning and development, and looking at how some aspects of the program should be modified to meet specific cultural needs.

MORALES: It's going to be a little different, of course, in another country, because they're going to have very different issues compared to what we have. And there are going to be some similarities. So, basically what we want to be able to do is to show them.

LOTHIAN: Show them how lives can be changed by an idea from more than 8,000 miles away.

MAFANI: The hope to make the lives of the people who are living with virus, even those who are affected, to have a life that is going to be bearable.

ZUNGU: I mean, what comes to my mind is - is - is a person that is going to be able to live longer, and then go back to work.

LOTHIAN: Dan Lothian, CNN, Boston, Massachusetts.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

OKE: And that wraps up this week's show. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you'll join us next week. And please let INSIDE AFRICA be your window to the continent. I will leave you with pictures of Father Dag, who passed away just a few days ago.

Until the next time, I'm Femi Oke. Take care.

END

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