Schmid on Ryan White

When the Ryan White Care Act was passed 25 years ago, Congress was responding to a national health emergency that was overwhelming our Nation, particularly hospitals and health clinics in large urban areas.  People were dying because there were no effective long lasting treatments and the only option was just AZT.  Emergency funding was needed to help pay for hospital beds, doctors and nurses, drugs, hospice care, and the city and state public health systems that were struggling to respond to the epidemic.   A lot has changed since 1990 thanks to the courageous people living with HIV and their families and friends, who not only endured sickness and death, but also stigma, discrimination, and unnecessary shame. Leadership in our government by giants such as Sens. Ted Kennedy and Orin Hatch, and Rep. Henry Waxman overcame the bigotry shown by their fellow members, and deserve praise for their compassion. Hospitals and volunteer health clinics provided comfort and care, but without some sort of medication to arrest the virus, which destroys a patient’s immune system, in most instances people quickly died.    As the 1990’s progressed, so did the ingenuity of America’s pharmaceutical industry as they developed medications that would not only treat the many opportunistic infections that were caused by AIDS, but also drugs that would slow or block the replication of the virus.  At first, patients would have to take 10, 20 or more pills per day. But today, highly active a...
Source: PHRMA - Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Source Type: news