The Faces of AIDS

Children with AIDS. Mothers with AIDS. Babies orphaned by AIDS. It's easier to let it pass quickly from our minds when we don't have faces to attach to this disease. But those who are affected by AIDS have faces, and smiles, and eyes that cry, and hearts that break for the loved ones they will leave behind and for the ones they have lost. Kyle was able to talk to mothers with AIDS, give crocs to children with AIDS and play with the babies of parents who have died with AIDS. The stories are incredible, but they are just people, like us. And they are dying by the ten of thousands every day. The numbers are hard to fathom, but when you look at the faces, suddenly the numbers take on a very different meaning. Every "number" is a person that God has created - knit together in the womb - with the love of a Father. He has created them for a purpose, and his heart breaks when their lives are affected, or stolen by AIDS. His heart is breaking and so should ours. The crazy thing is, we can do something about this. Antiretroviral medicines are cheap. Very cheap. And when an AIDS patient - even one who is in the latter stages of AIDS - begins taking these medicines there is something called the Lazarus effect. They literally come up off the deathbed and get better. If you've seen photos of people who have experienced the Lazarus effect you wouldn't believe it. And the medicine that literally could save millions of lives is, I repeat, cheap. In Ethiopia, the government provides antiretroviral medicine for free (It is NOT this way in many African countries) but they don't do a very good job of providing education about how to stop the spread of AIDS, and they don't do a very good job of educating about AIDS in general, so there is a great stigma attached to it. People don't want to admit they have it until it is too late. Paperwork must be filled out to get the medicine, and when you are on your deathbed with no one else around to help you but a seven year-old boy who can't get to town to get the paperwork, then it doesn't do much good if the medicine is free. The sad stories are endless, and I promise tomorrow I will do a cheerier post. But Kyle and I think about these things, and wonder what those of us, who have been given so much, can do.