Yinka Shokunbi / Assistant Editor, Lagos
The extent of the tragedy of the ill-fated MH17 airline which crashed on Wednesday July 17 in Eastern Ukraine has indeed began to dawn on the international community of HIV/AIDS which is holding the 20th International AIDS
Joep Lange and Director General, National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Professor John Idoko
Summit in Melbourne Australia.
Prior to the release of the names of the passengers on board the airline allegedly gunned down by rebels, there was the news that about 100 of them were AIDS activists and Scientists who were attending the International Conference on HIV/AIDS, a bi-annual summit, which openedin Australia last Sunday.
Although no one can still say for sure how many of the passengers were actually heading to the international conference but it has become very open that at least six of the passengers were very top global personalities and Scientists of repute whose works on HIV have spanned decades.
The annual conference is known to be very different from traditional medical gatherings. There is usually a mixture of scientists, clinicians, human rights activists, patients as well as public health employees that come together in order to collaborate. This underscored the reason why there were so many speculations as to the actual number of people who were billed for the conference aboard the ill-fated plane.
All over the world, the loss of the foremost Scientist, Joep Lange, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam who had worked in AIDS research since 1983, nearly the beginning of the epidemic has been quite devastating.
“It’s incredibly devastating as there was a loss of knowledge and experiences that could impact the progression of research”, says Richard Brodsky, HIV+ since 1997, a brain cancer survivor since 2002 and a marathon runner for life who is also attending the Summit.
Lange’s partner and former nurse Jacqueline van Tongeren was also killed in the crash, as was Lucie van Mens whose campaign for wider use of female condoms by young girls at risk of HIV infection took her frequently to sub-Saharan Africa. Others who died in the crash include: Glenn Thomas [World Health Organization media adviser] and Pim de Kuijer [32-year-old activist].
Two days to the opening of the event IAS President-Elect Chris Beyrer told newsmen that organizers had discussed cancelling the five-day programme that is due to include speakers such as former U.S. President Bill Clinton and musician and activist Bob Geldof. But said everyone was in favour of it taking place as an expression of solidarity in the common cause of fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
At the opening ceremony Sunday, representatives from organizations including Amsterdam-based Stop AIDS Now! and AIDS Action Europe, who lost colleagues in the crashwere invited on to the conference stage as a mark of respect while condolence registers were equally opened and signed by participants and visitors to the conference.
Perhaps of great concern to the HIV/AIDS community at the event is the fact that some of the best brains in AIDS research were those affected in the crash.
Dr Lange a Dutch clinical researcher was known to have focused on HIV therapy. He served as the former president of the International AIDS society. He was also the founding Chairman of PharmAccess Foundation, which advocates the improvement of access to HIV/AIDS therapy in developing countries.
Lange played a very active and important role in HIV/AID research. In the mid-1990s, he advocated for the use of combination therapy in the management of HIV/AIDS. This was important as it reduces the development of drug resistance compared to monotherapy. He was an important advocate for providing affordable AIDS medications to African countries.
He was quoted to have widely said, “If we can get cold Coca-Cola and beer to every remote corner of Africa, it should not be impossible to do the same with drugs.”
His studies on the offspring of HIV-positive volunteer mothers in Rwanda and Uganda showed a decrease in congenital transmission [1% chance] with antiretroviral drug treatment. It is difficult to quantify Lange’s contributions.
In the mid-1990s, Mr. Lange switched his focus to helping deliver the drugs to low-income communities such as Nigeria, Uganda and Tanzania. He enlisted the help of Dutch companies including Heineken International and Royal Dutch Shell PLC for financial backing.
His projects became models for large-scale rollouts of drugs across Africa by the World Health Organization and other organizations.
“We absolutely need dedicated researchers like Joep Lange to find a way forward,” said Marcus Low, head of policy at Treatment Action Campaign in Cape Town, an organization that gained prominence in South Africa during the late 1990s as a vocal advocate for increased access to HIV and AIDS treatments. “They don’t just sit in a lab, which is important, but also work to ensure we have the information, supplies, and the money to buy the medicines.”
Lange was a known charismatic leader that promoted collaboration among doctors and researchers. Additionally, he helped promote the idea of HIV/AIDS being a medical pandemic and not a disease. It is not a question of who gets the glory for discovering the cure to HIV. The loss of Lange will have adverse consequences! According to the 2013 UN AIDS report, there were 1.6 million individuals who have died from AIDS. How many more will be affected?
WHO’s Glenn Thomas was to be part of media launch on July 20th that involved the display of new tools to prevent harm to users of intravenous drugs. He was recognized as an effective communicator on the dependencies between HIV/AIDS & tuberculosis [note: susceptibility to tuberculosis rises dramatically in immune-compromised states].
The 20th AIDS Conference has as its theme: Stepping up the pace.
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