"No obits" - San Francisco AIDS crisis 20 years on

by Cynthia Laird | Bay Area Reporter
Friday, 17 August 2018 13:16 GMT

* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

There was a time when the Bay Area Reporter’s obituaries were the first thing many readers turned to in the morning

“No obits” ran the headline in the Bay Area Reporter (BAR), an LGBT weekly paper, 20 years ago this week.

As the Monday that week drew to a close, Mike Salinas, the then news editor of the Bay Area Reporter, announced that no obituaries from AIDS-related deaths had been submitted for Thursday's paper. 

For years, the paper had published obits each week of mostly gay men who had died of AIDS, as the epidemic devastated our community. The BAR even had a full-time position dedicated to editing the obituaries. 

Then, one day, there were none. 

It was a brief respite conveyed by the paper's famous "No obits" article written by then-assistant editor Timothy Rodrigues on August 13, 1998.

The article emphasised that while no obituaries were submitted that week in August, it did not mean there were no AIDS-related deaths. And the BAR continues to cover the epidemic today in its many manifestations: housing, discrimination and stigma, to name just a few. 

While new medications mean HIV/AIDS is no longer a death sentence for many, there remain underserved people living with HIV, or at risk for it, here in San Francisco and elsewhere. Lack of access to appropriate medications means that many still die of the disease, especially in other parts of the world.

Yet even today, the article stands as a stark reminder of just how AIDS dominated the gay community: when there were no obituaries in San Francisco’s LGBT newspaper it was front-page news.

Figures released last autumn showed that new HIV diagnoses fell in the city by 16 percent between 2015 and 2016, and have declined by 49 percent since 2012. In May, officials said the number of new HIV infections for 2017 was 223. 

That yearly figure used to be in the thousands.

Today, two decades after the article was published, there have been many advances, most notably the advent of PrEP, an HIV prevention medication that was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2012. It has taken several years for PrEP use to become more widespread in the U.S., and it continues to lag among communities of colour and transgender women. 

One of the main reasons is the exorbitant cost of Truvada, the only medication approved for PrEP, which, at about $1,500 a month, is simply too expensive for many people.

San Francisco has embarked on an ambitious “Getting to Zero” initiative that aims to reduce HIV transmission to near-zero by 2020. Early treatment is key to the programme, as is increased access to PrEP and a campaign to end stigma. Studies show that when people achieve an undetectable viral load, they are very unlikely to transmit the virus to someone else. That, combined with universal PrEP usage, would go a long way toward curbing HIV transmissions.

As the "No obits" article turns 20, it has prompted reflection about what that time was like when the Bay Area Reporter’s obituaries were the first thing many readers turned to in the morning. 

I'm proud that the headline still resounds today, but I am sad that HIV/AIDS remains a stubborn disease and that everyone who needs treatment can't get it, and that access to prevention such as PrEP is out of reach for so many. In the richest country on earth, we should do better.

Cynthia Laird is news editor of the Bay Area Reporter. 

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