HEAL Raises Awareness In Chicago For HIV/AIDS Patients In Kenya

In the Lakeview area of Chicago known as Boys Town, over 100 showed up on a beautiful Friday evening at the Sidetrack Bar to raise awareness for people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa.

The April 17 event was hosted by Health and Empowerment for African Lives, a non-profit association started by a group of faculty and students from the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health.

HEAL began in 2007 as a way to address the need for financial support, improved health care and education for the people of Kisumu, Kenya. HEAL has been training doctors and nurses to understand the sensitive needs of HIV-positive patients in Kenya, especially those who are homosexual, which is illegal there.

The group’s second annual fundraiser drew a crowd passionate about this cause. Chicagoan Shakira Fiel said she came with a friend because she felt it was important for people to understand the problems of poverty and HIV infection in the region.

“Most people don’t really know that you can live for a dollar in Africa,” she said. “It’s wonderful to have an event for this. It’s really valuable.”

Craig Hyland, assistant director of development and alumni relations for UIC SPH, said the AIDS epidemic in Africa is spreading fast, yet the mentality surrounding the disease and homosexuality is behind the times.

“For many younger members of the LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender) community, HIV/AIDS is something we read or hear about, and rarely see. I’ve only come across a few people infected by the disease,” Hyland said. “So, to hear of a place like Kenya, with an AIDS epidemic similar to what we saw in the US in the 1980’s, but with ideas of homosexuality that are like those of the 1940’s, it’s crazy. This is why an awareness raising event like this is so important.”

Robert Bailey, a professor of epidemiology at UIC SPH and one of the founders of HEAL, said HIV in Kisumu is more than just a growing epidemic. In a region where 30 percent of adult women and 20 percent of adult men are infected with HIV, everyone has a relative with HIV, he said. “So almost everyone is infected or affected by it.”

For nearly seven years, Bailey has been visiting Africa with his wife, Nadine Peacock, an associate professor of community health sciences at the UIC SPH. While conducting male circumcision research there, they discovered that many of the men volunteering for the study were testing positive for HIV.

“We realized we had to have something in place for these young men,” Peacock said. “We couldn’t just turn them away. We figured if we had an organization like this, we could do a lot more good.”

Amidst the music and high energy that filled the Sidetrack Bar, images of African children and adults were interspersed throughout. A personal wine tasting was donated by Lush Wine and Spirits for the raffle, and silent auction items included hand-crafted wooden eating utensils, crushed eggshell wall hangings and paper-beaded jewelry made by people living in Africa with HIV.

“For many of the artisans, these crafts are their only source of income,” Hyland said. “So we were happy to purchase them for our silent auction, and even more pleased by peoples’ response.”

The money raised exceeded the group’s expectations, Hyland added, and will be used to benefit HEAL projects in Kenya.

-- Danielle Desjardins and Tina Daniel