French Public Health Figure Takes On Global AIDS
Africa's Aids crisis is one of the signature catastrophes of our time. Millions of Africans live with HIV or full-blown AIDS. They often live in communities that refuse to even acknowledge the disease's existence because of its sexual connotations.
Bernard Kouchner, a long-time public health advocate and, by far, France's most popular politician, has started an organization called Esther to fight global AIDS. Esther creates a sustainable public health framework in countries where health care is all too often subject to the whim of overstretched charity groups.
Mr. Kouchner is perhaps best known for founding Doctors Without Borders, the renowned humanitarian organization, in the 1970's.
A Public Health Catastrophe
One of the more baffling ironies of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa is that the very nature of the disease is forcing the creation of a lasting public health framework in order for patients to be treated.
AIDS medication, which Western countries are finally beginning to provide in appropriate quantity, needs to be administered regularly in some kind of clinical, public health environment. HIV/AIDS is forcing Africa, and those who care about the continent, to come up with a sustainable care giving infrastructure,
A New Public Health Organization
ESTHER (the French acronym for Working Together for Therapeutic Solidarity among Networked Hospitals) aims to do exactly that. The organization currently operates in Benin, Burkina Faso Cameroon, Mali, Senegal, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Morocco, and 10 other countries outside of Africa.
In these countries, ESTHER helps set up hospital referral centers for people living with HIV/AIDS and provides a public health framework for regularly receiving drugs. ESTHER brings in French hospital experts to advise local workers on how to run a relatively sophisticated day-to-day operation and make careers out of care-giving. Every aspect from bookkeeping to handling medicine is covered.
"Taking antiretroviral drugs is for life," Kouchner writes on an Esther website. "For now, working with the hospitals is central to this project. But with time we hope to decentralize treatment and care from the hospitals to healthcare centers and even homes within the various communities."
A Public Health Career Fighting HIV/AIDS
Public health careers can include working at your local health center or flying to Africa to help implement an HIV/AIDS treatment system. Public Health is a personally satisfying degree option and one that can lead to a full medical career in a wide variety of fields.
