World AIDS Day

12/1/05

News Conference

Today is December first, officially marked as the World Aids Day. We take the opportunity to publicize the need to fight against AIDS and HIV infection. This requires an international effort.

As a doctor, I personally saw the rise of the aids epidemic. The first case was reported when I was still in medical school. Within a few years, AIDS/HIV infection became an epidemic in this country ravaging all the major cities like New York . Sections of hospitals had to be dedicated to care for these gravely sick patients, and many of them died soon after their diagnosis. The prognosis was so poor that many patients did not bother to come to the hospital and died at home. Fortunately, great efforts have been made in the education, prevention, and treatment of AIDS/ HIV infection in this country. We saw how coordinated effort as guided by sound government policy can have an impact on a devastating epidemic. The incidence of AIDS/HIV infection had leveled off. With the advent of new medications, many patients can live with their disease. The transmission of HIV from the mother to child during delivery can be stopped with the proper medicine given. We have witnessed tremendous strides against this disease in the U.S.A. and Western Europe .

Unfortunately, we see these efforts to be greatly lacking in the rest of the world. Most HIV infected patients in the Caribbean's and Africa go undiagnosed and untreated. A recent study done by physicians at my institution, Cornell University Medical College in Haiti showed that after one year of medical treatment, 90% of patients remained alive and became active members of the society, versus only 10% of patients remained alive in the past when no treatments were available. This study demonstrated the importance of making the diagnosis for the infected people and having them proper treated. No longer should we put our head in the sand and hope that it will go away. Only by identifying the infected people with proper diagnosis, can we have the opportunity to not only treat them, but also to educate them to prevent the spread of the disease.

What we have seen maybe only the tip of the iceberg. The World Heath Organization predicts that the potential epidemic of AIDS in China and India maybe many times of what we are seeing now in South Africa . We have the opportunity to stop the biggest epidemic in its making.

That is precisely the mission of the China Aids Fund. I am the president of the New York Chapter, of the China Aids Fund. Our mission is to raise money from the Chinese Americans to fund programs in China . The focus is on education and government policy. We are allied with the family planning counsels in China . We had our inaugural gala two weeks ago, with 400 guests attended. The event raised $500,000.

AIDS is a global problem that affects innocent countless people. They are not just that injection drug abuser, prostitutes, and homosexuals. But they include children contracting the virus during normal childbirth from the tainted blood of their mother. They are health care workers who contract the virus from inadvertent blood contamination. They can be anyone of you receiving blood transfusion for elective surgery or emergency injury. It can affect all of us. Please pitch in to help.

Wilson Ko, M.D.

Associate Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery

Cornell University Medial College

President

New York Chapter , China Aids Fund