In 2000, when Gregg Bordowitz went to Durban, South Africa, the enormity of that country’s AIDS crisis seemed hopeless. Of the 25 million HIV-positive Africans, over 4 million were in South Africa. Few South Africans could afford the drug cocktail that’s reversed death rates in the U.S. and Europe or the variety of medications that fight the opportunistic infections that actually cause death in AIDS patients. Their best hope was generic drugs manufactured in Brazil, Thailand, and India, which cost pennies on the dollar compared to name-brand ones. But in deference to the major pharmaceutical companies’ patent rights, importation of generics had been banned by the South African government.
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Bordowitz was keenly aware of the disparity between North American AIDS treatment and that found in the rest of the world. A filmmaker and HIV-positive AIDS activist, he had pills and money and lots of friends who told him to grab his camera and fly to Durban for the 13th International AIDS Conference. Because of the issue of access to drugs, they said, the conference would be “amazing.”
The most significant event of Bordowitz’s trip to Africa wasn’t captured on film. At a dinner hosted by South African AIDS activist Zackie Achmat (who leads the Treatment Action Campaign, an organization challenging South African policy on drug imports), the American visitors were asked to show their meds to the South Africans. Momentarily nonplussed, Bordowitz and friends dug into their pockets and put their pills on the table. “Some of the people hadn’t even seen them,” Bordowitz says. “They hadn’t seen what they were fighting for.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Nathan Mandell.
