Haitian AIDS activists and supporters to protest near U.N. headquarters

A coalition of health care, HIV/AIDS and religious organizations will hold a demonstration near the United Nations this week to protest the lack of a coordinated relief effort for people living with the virus in Haiti.

More than 50 New York-based activists and their Haitian counterparts will hold the protest in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza near U.N. headquarters on Manhattan's East Side at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, March 31.

Bailey House, CitiWide Harm Reduction, Housing Works, Metropolitan Community Church and PHAP+, a coalition of Haitian AIDS organizations, are among the organizations scheduled to participate. Organizers say uncoordinated relief efforts in the wake of the Jan. 12 earthquake are leaving Haitians vulnerable to AIDS and endangering those who already live with the disease.

Activists are demanding that the U.N. and the United States immediately adopt and execute a relief effort.

"The United Nations and USAID have been promising a real plan to provide desperately needed medical care to people with HIV since the relief efforts began," Esther Boucicault, president of PHAP+, said. "We can no longer tolerate their inaction. We must tell the world what is going on."

The earthquake nearly wiped out Haiti's AIDS infrastructure. After the catastrophe, a U.N. report acknowledged AIDS-specific health care in the country is "under serious threat" and it is "imperative" that relief efforts address the problem.

Protestors are also demanding expanded access to antiretroviral medications. Since the earthquake, Housing Works and PHAP+ have opened two new HIV clinics and provided significant support to one family health clinic, but they have been unable to obtain cooperation from the Global Fund to access its stockpile of AIDS medications.

The fund is a worldwide public-private partnership devoted to attracting and disbursing additional resources to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

There are 120,000 Haitians living with HIV/AIDS, according to UNAIDS, but fewer than 40 percent of those who had access to care before the quake now receive it, activists maintained.

Housing Works reported in a March 24 press release more than 1 million Haitians continue to live in tent cities, with sexual violence and exploitation in the camp threatening to increase the rates of new infections.

As EDGE previously reported, Housing Works immediately responded to requests from Haitian AIDS organizations in the days immediately following the earthquake to help set up health care facilities and provide medical equipment and supplies. The organization continues to recruit volunteer health care providers to travel to Haiti for brief periods to care for patients at the three clinics it's operating in partnership with PHAP+.

Housing Works spokesperson David Thorpe told EDGE staffing is scheduled through April.

"We very much need more people, so we encourage anybody who might be interested to visit www.housingworks.org/Haiti," he said. "We have had a couple beautiful collaborations."

These partnerships include a group of Connecticut doctors who formed a Heart for Haiti team and spent a week at Housing Works' clinics. Another group of doctors from Staten Island University will travel to the Caribbean country next month. And as of Feb. 9, Housing Works had received well over $100,000 worth of donated medical supplies and medication.

Since then, it has raised an additional $45,000 through direct appeals to donors. And the "Shear Madness" benefit on Feb. 23 that auctioned the trademark ponytail Housing Works president Charles King had worn for 20 years raised more than $15,000.

King told EDGE in February his organization was having logistical problems getting wheelchairs, crutches and other large items to Haiti for injured earthquake victims. Thrope said the organization eventually sent around $20,000 worth of equipment and medications by boat in a 20-foot shipping container.