Welcome to our Zimbabwe AIDS Project page. With the onset of COVID-19 infection on the African continent, and specifically in Zimbabwe, we wanted to create a social media page where ZIM and others can share their stories, questions, and anxieties. But first let me tell you who I am, we are, and how we got here...
I have been an HIV/AIDS and General Internal Medicine specialist and clinical researcher in the United States since 1987, after finishing medical school/internship at the University of Miami Medical School/Jackson Memorial Hospital and completing my medical residency at Yale University School of Medicine/Greenwich Hospital and prior to the launch of the first HIV drug, AZT.
I first visited Africa for the Durban International AIDS Conference in 2000, fully expecting that this would be my first and last trip to the continent. After safari in Botswana and visiting Victoria Falls (VF), Zimbabwe (ZIM) with a man named “C.L.”, a resident of VF, I stopped in Gaborone Botswana to visit the main hospital and see the toll that the HIV/AIDS crisis was taking on the Batswana. After visiting a ward of 137 women, all unresponsive, mostly comatose, and awaiting death from AIDS, my heart was literally torn from my chest! While crying on the flight from Gaborone to Durban SA, my first non-profit, Global Health Organization (GHO), was created with the goal of opening the first Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) clinic to combat HIV/AIDS on the continent in Gaborone.
Together with my Executive Director and good friend, Alon Marom, and with the support of our Ambassador-At-Large and my mentor, Former US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, as well as Board of Director members, Quincy Jones and Bruce Roberts, we raised $250,000 at our United Nations fundraiser in July 2001, set to open our Botswana clinic on Oct 12, 2001 with Dr. Diana Dickinson. However, 9/11 occurred one month prior, and our dreams as quickly as they began. GHO closed its doors in 2004.
When I arrived back in the U.S. from Durban, C.L. had written to me to share that he was HIV-positive and his wife was pregnant but “not yet tested”. Sadly, she tested positive and they lost their baby to a probable AIDS-related infection after 2 months. C.L. was to be one of our first patients in Gaborone. I began sending an HIV medication, Trizivir, to C.L. and his wife, telling them not to try again for a child until I contacted them. Blind to CD4 cell counts or viral load tests, 6 months later, I told the couple they could try to conceive a child. In July 2002, my godson, T. Gary L. was born HIV-negative, years before prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) with antiretroviral therapy became standard of care.
After visiting VF in July 2009 for my godson’s 7th birthday party, the time seemed right to lend a hand in Zimbabwe. In 2010, I founded my former non-profit, World Health Clinicians, and flew to VF to create what then became known as BEAT AIDS PROJECT ZIMBABWE (BAPZ), now Zimbabwe AIDS Project (ZAP).
Along with:
1) my current non-profit, Health Care Advocates Int’l (HCAI) Creative Director, Thomas Evans, and then-volunteers and now HCAI CEO and Director of Global Prevention Outreach & Advocacy, Pattie McKnight and Lenny Courtemanche,
2) our ZAP Country Director, Patrick Hazangwe M.D. PhD, Administrator Philip Madhodha, HIV Advocate Sipho Mahlangu (original founding member of BAPZ), and Pharmacy Assistant Gideon Makatose, as well as BAPZ founding members Cryface Lusinga and Priscilla Mhlanga, and
3) the full support of ZIM leaders including, but not limited to, Ambassador Chitsaka Chipaziwa, MoHCC Permanent Secretary Brigadier General (Retired) Dr. Gerald Gwinji, then-CEO National AIDS Council Dr. Tapuwa Magure and NAC Operations Mgr Raymond Yekeye, and former Provincial Medical Director Nyasha Masuka and District Medical Director Wisdom Kurauone and VF Mayor Sifiso Mpofu, as well as Executive Committee Chair Martin Mhlanga and the entire ZAP Executive Committee, as well as hundreds of others in the MoHCC, District Health Executives and residents of VF and Matebeleland North:
we have:
1) built and given the people of VF a state-of-the-art general medical and HIV clinic,
2) tested over 10,000 ZIM via our enormously successful HIV ADVOCATES/ HIV EQUAL national musical festivals and testing events,
3) initiated ART for over 8,600 ZIM, and
4) performed thousands of viral load analyses with the Roche Taqman96 that we brought to VF, all with the goals of:
> achieving the UNAIDS “90-90-90”,
> fighting stigma & discrimination associated with HIV/AIDS,
> advocating for those who are underserved, marginalized and disenfranchised, and
> reducing the morbidity and mortality associated with HIV/AIDS for the people of Zimbabwe.
Although we launch this page at the onset of COVID-19 in ZIM, please feel free to use this page for discussion of issues including HIV, stigma and discrimination, patient advocacy, community connection, and anything else you desire to educate others or learn...
Gary Blick, M.D.
