It costs money to treat HIV/AIDS — money the Hawaii Island HIV/AIDS Foundation hopes to raise at Taste of Life on Saturday. The organization provides multiple services to help people with the virus and prevent other people from getting the disease.
“How can we, as a community, help HIV-positive individuals?” is one of the core questions of treatment, said Teri Hollowell, director of programming for the group.
The group makes efforts to talk about the disease, provide treatment, reduce stigma and provide testing. That can be the courses on HIV/AIDS they teach at local schools.
The virus acts by targeting and destroying important cells in the immune system. This makes the patient vulnerable to other diseases.
The group attempts to provide a full-scale service, including assistance with disability claims, federal health benefits or food. That food is provided out of the food pantry in the middle of the facility, connected to an eating area. The pantry is important for the counselors, said Hollowell, as everyone can talk about food. This serves as a way to get people to be more open, she said.
They are limited to one visit a month for their clients, she said.
Many of their clients are homeless, she said, making supplying food very important. Those people are also at risk of going off their medical regimens as a result of the instability of their lives, she said.
A vital concern is getting the patients their medications, Hollowell said. The current treatment for HIV is a lifelong program of anti-retroviral medications. This helps prevent the virus from multiplying and maintaining a healthy immune system. It also reduces the likelihood of transmitting the disease.
The three largest categories of reported exposures on the island come from male-to-male sex, with 378 cases, followed by injected drug use at 57 cases and then heterosexual contact at 49.
This has partially guided the foundation’s efforts, which included outreach to the gay community and a needle-exchange program.
One piece of that outreach includes setting up a table in local gay bars, said Bruce Merrell, executive director.
It can be surprising how many people will stop by at those tables, he said.
Sometimes the people will be interested in the information. Others will go with the confidential tests provided for the group.
In these ways the organization can find people who are not aware they have the disorder, Merrell said, and help them begin treatment.
Intravenous drug users are also at a great deal of risk, as users will share needles. This causes direct contact between the blood of two people, making a potential transmission of any bloodborne disease more likely.
So the group seeks to get used needles out of circulation, regardless of who brought them. This is done through work with the CHOW Project.
The organization uses the idea of harm reduction in the program, which is “nonjudgmental, holistic and personalized,” CHOW wrote.
“The main objective is to reduce the potential dangers and health risks associated with (potentially harmful) behaviors, even for those who are not willing or able to completely stop,” CHOW wrote in an informational pamphlet.
There are other risks, including the water used to clean equipment and the other parts of the equipment.
There are also new dangerous practices the group seeks to quell, said Hollowell. One is users injecting drugs, then other users injecting that person’s blood, said Hollowell.
The goal is to end such dangerous practices.
By providing clean needles to users in a nonjudgmental fashion the organization can help prevent the spread of HIV, hepatitis C and other blood-borne diseases, Hollowell said.
It’s simple in description — the user comes in and trades in used needles. Then the worker gives them roughly the same amount, Merrell said.
“We’re not going to sit there and count them,” he said.
Although the exchange is not one that automatically includes communication, the exchange allows for an initial point of contact, they said.
There are people who will visit for some time before agreeing to being tested, Hollowell said. There was a woman who went to the exchange for a year before being tested, she said. They found she was hepatitis-C positive and she began treatment.
Another woman came in with a heavily infected left arm, Holloway said, as the result of drug abuse.
No one had shown her how to inject heroin so that it enters the bloodstream properly, she said.
So several counselors worked with her in how to send the drug into her veins instead of throughout the muscle and connective tissue of the arm, she said.
As a result, the next time they saw the woman her arm was much healthier.
The stigma that still surrounds HIV/AIDS complicates the efforts of the group, Hollowell said.
“It’s surprising how strong it still is,” Merrell said.
They have to explain repeatedly that AIDS is not spread by hugs, shaking hands or eating together, he said.
The stigma may scare off some of their clients, who don’t want their status or concerns known, Merrell said. One way to counter that is to use the unmarked back door of the building for people who don’t want to be seen, he said.
It also leads to home visits and meetings at a neutral place like a fast food eatery, Hollowell said.
AIDS itself rarely kills the person. Instead death comes from other illnesses that are halted by a healthy immune system. Some disorders are almost exclusively seen in people with AIDS, like the cancer Karposi’s Sarcoma.
But an early intervention and lifelong treatment can provide people with HIV a lifespan comparable to other Americans, according to CDC figures.
“These people can still significantly contribute to the community,” Merrell said.
The fundraiser will start at 6 p.m. Saturday at King Kamehameha’s Kona Beach Hotel.