Category Archives: Summer 2013
Q&A with Rochelle Walensky Cost-Effective HIV Care
After graduating from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1995, Dr. Rochelle Walensky worked in an inner-city hospital in Baltimore. “There were floors of patients with AIDS for whom we could do very little,” said Walensky. “Many of them died.” Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), also known as the triple-drug cocktail, was introduced the next year. Suddenly, AIDS patients were getting better. Fewer were hospitalized. “In my formative training years there was hope,” said Walensky. “I thought, I’ve got to be around to see how this all plays out.”
Models of Care: Good Grades and Unanswered Questions
It’s a matter of life and death. Say there are two brothers in their early 30s. Both become infected with HIV at around the same time and both have about the same CD4 level, a measure of how well one’s immune system is working. One brother remains in his village near the Kalahari Desert to help with the family farm and cattle post. The other moves to Botswana’s capital, Gaborone, to work in an office. Both men are treated with the same AIDS drugs under the country’s national treatment program. Yet depending on where they get treatment, one brother has a ten times greater chance of dying than the other. Why? Continue reading
Dr. Richard Marlink: Global Clinician
When he was an intern in New York City in 1980, Dr. Richard Marlink knew something was going on, he just didn’t know what. The hospital where he worked, St. Vincent’s, served patients from Harlem to Greenwich Village. “Mainly gay men, homeless people, and drug addicts used our clinics,” said Marlink. The staff began seeing a surprising number of rare conditions like Kaposi’s sarcoma and miliary tuberculosis—conditions usually seen only once or twice in a medical career. Continue reading