May 14th, 2003
Half Moon Bay Review

Medical City Center
Looking the AIDS Crisis in the Face

By Stacy Trevenon, Half Moon Bay Review

Marie Koerper was one of 65 Coastside adults and teens who gathered at Half Moon Bay High School on Saturday morning to address a tough subject: the AIDS epidemic.

"It was very, very educational," said Koerper, a mother of two teens. "I wish the kids'd heard. It was so real world as to not allow them to escape the idea it can't happen to them."

The symposium was "HIV/AIDS: Global Crisis, Local Problem," and it was a somber and eye-opening experience, said one Half Moon Bay teen.

"I thought what it was saying was really relevant and important for me to understand and learn about," said 18-year-old Half Moon Bay High student Justin Labrecque, "because this is a global issue."

The symposium featured a range of speakers, from grassroots health care workers in Africa to San Mateo County medical personnel to a man who gave his personal story of living with AIDS.

Once attendees had their informational packets and red-and-gold AIDS pins, event co-chair and Rotarian Natasha Martin, who works with AIDS education, prevention and orphans in Africa, showed slides from her work there - including one of a huge tree which served as a village school. She introduced El Granada resident Claire Borkert, M.D., the medical director of the East Bay AIDS Center.

Borkert explained how the HIV retrovirus affects the body and the way medications like AZT and protease inhibitor work. She explained the dangers of opportunistic infections, which often kill before AIDS does.

Modern medications that keep a patient's blood T-cell count above 200, which signals full-blown AIDS, she said, "give an opportunity for people to live a normal life with HIV."

Nabil Ahmed, coordinator for the San Mateo County Positive Prevention Plus educational program, discussed sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) which will statistically affect "one in three" people age 15-24. He listed county-based information and testing, including the mobile van which regularly visits the Coastside. (For information on the van, call (650) 573-2588.)

Montara resident Gary Selnow, executive director of World Internet Resources for Education and Development (WIRED), discussed bringing the Internet and computers to developing countries.

"Ask a kid to read about HIV for two hours, it's like a death sentence," he said. "Tell them they're going to use a computer, and two hours goes by and you have to pry them away."

Keynote speaker Mary Makokha, founder of the Rural Education and Economic Enhancement Program (REEP) in Kenya, discussed AIDS and stigma in Africa.

"In many communities, the worst challenge is denial," she said, adding that her attempts to demonstrate proper use of condoms made her "the most hated person in the community."

She works with Martin to get AIDS orphans into school. "You should see the change," she said. "Their hope has just come back."

It is hard, she added, for African women to speak out on the issue.

"If a woman's husband is going with a bad woman...it's hard to get women to say no," she said. "They don't have a voice."

Silence and uneasy rustling filled the auditorium when speaker Mike Beck, who regularly addresses classrooms through the Positive Prevention program, told his story.

A married father of three in a churchgoing family, he left the church upon his divorce and sought new friends in San Francisco bars. After a childhood of emotional abuse by his father and sexual abuse by his mother, he said their acceptance and their dizzying drug-centered lifestyle drew him in.

"Speed gives you everything synthetically," he said.

With a master's degree in fine art, he was able to support himself, but when painting became physically hard, he sought a doctor's advice, and eventually learned he had full-blown AIDS. The nurse who broke the news was crying so hard, he said, "I spent my emotional energy making her feel better."

Made homeless when he and his roommates were evicted, he considered suicide, but was talked out of it by his daughter.

He puzzled over how he had contracted the disease - having learned about AIDS, he had abstained from sex after his divorce, and used only his own needles for drugs. He weathered another blow when he learned that an addict roommate who had AIDS, had spitefully and deliberately infected his needles.

Though medications often make him physically ill, he said they help him maintain his health.

"It's odd, to say in the same breath that I have AIDS and I'm lucky, but I am. I'm fortunate enough to be adjusting to the medications."

He said revenge on his former roommate was useless.

"This was originally my fault. I'm the one who put the needles in, who chose something unsafe."

He had a message for young listeners tempted to use drugs.

"Take care of yourselves. If you don't know how, ask. That's why I'm here," he said. "I don't want you to feel sorry for me. I want you to put me in your brain. When you're faced with bad decisions, I want for me to pop up in your brain."

The event was coordinated by the Half Moon Bay Rotary Club. And before the symposium was over, Beck had been asked to speak at Half Moon Bay High.

The teens who attended the event said they had already learned.

"I feel like now, I realize that AIDS is a bigger issue in the world than I thought," said Moss Beach resident Gina, 16, who declined to give her last name.

"I think the people here really inspired me," said her friend, also named Gina, also 16.

"If you think about it, you're making the choice. So it's your own fault if you get it."

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