Effort To End HIV/AIDS Has Far Reaches, Activists Say
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The global community is turning its focus to the HIV/AIDS epidemic as efforts closer to home continue to provide outreach to those suffering from the disease. NY1's Cheryl Wills filed the following report.When Carfer Lamor was diagnosed with HIV more than a decade ago he says he became an outcast and lost everything including his apartment.
"I was very much homeless. I was just completely traumatized," Lamor said.
After being bounced from shelter to shelter, he finally connected with an organization called Unique People Services, which helps find housing for people living with HIV/AIDS. Now he pays one-third of his income towards a one bedroom apartment in Washington Heights. The organization takes care of the rest.
"They pretty much just guided me through to be able to get my self esteem back, to be able to figure out what I wanted to do and achieve everything I could," Lamor said.
Grassroots organizations like Unique People Services have been on the frontlines of the HIV/AIDS epidemic for 20 years helping people who fall through the cracks.
"It’s our end goal to provide opportunity for individual to live productive life," said Yvette Brissette-Andre of Unique People Services.
Living productive with HIV/AIDS has been the mission of AIDS activists around the world. The United Nations just wrapped up an international conference where officials set a target of providing life saving drugs to 15 million HIV-infected people in the poorest countries by 2015.
It's no secret that the African continent has been hit the hardest by AIDS, but for the first time since the disease was initially reported 30 years ago UN Officials say they are getting a handle on the epidemic.
"Africa has been hit hard by the crisis of HIV/AIDS because it’s chronic poverty conditions which made it worse. But the good news is there are many, many islands of hope," said Dr. Djibril Diallo of UNAIDS.
UN officials say they are on track to end HIV/AIDS by 2020.
"We’re really focusing three zeros: Making sure there is zero infection, making sure there is zero death related to AIDS, and three, making sure there is zero discrimination," Diallo said.
Closer to home, Carfer Lamor says he hopes that ambitious goal can become a reality sooner rather than later.