(The following history is extracted from the Fall 2016 MCAVHN Newletter.) CHAPTER 2:  20 YEARS OF INCREDIBLE PHARMACOLOGY (With Recollections of Rosalie Anchordoguy, co-founder of MCAVHN) 2016 marks 20 years of incredible pharmacology which has changed the face of the AIDS epidemic. Before 1996, AIDS was still a death sentence.  Rosalie remembers seeing 8 to 10 deaths per year at MCAVHN.  But then the antiretroviral medicines hit Mendocino County and that all began to change. “I remember when it really became apparent.   There was a World AIDS Day event.  Elizabeth (the MCAVHN executive director) had organized an art show at the museum in Willits, and people showed up at that art show, people who had looked like ghosts the last time I’d seen them, so ill and thin, like ethereal bodies, were now walking into the museum to see the event. People really came back from the brink of death.” Since then, we have had no more than 0-2 deaths per year related to AIDS/HIV.  Our clients who are HIV positive are no longer progressing to full-blown AIDS.  The virus is sensitive to the meds, and, if people are stable enough to be able to care for themselves, they are no longer dying of AIDS, but are living into old age. Since the advent of antiretroviral medicines, the mission of Mendocino County AIDS Voluteer Network has evolved to serve members of our community with another potentially deadly blood-borne illness, Hepatitis C. to be continued… (Back to Chapter 1)

Antiretroviral medications - bringing people back from the brink of death

(The following history is extracted from the Fall 2016 MCAVHN Newletter.) CHAPTER 2:  20 YEARS OF INCREDIBLE PHARMACOLOGY (With Recollections of Rosalie Anchordoguy, co- founder of MCAVHN) 2016 marks 20 years of incredible pharmacology which has changed the face of the AIDS epidemic. Before 1996, AIDS was still a death sentence.  Rosalie remembers seeing 8 to 10 deaths per year at MCAVHN.  But then the antiretroviral medicines hit Mendocino County and that all began to change. “I remember when it really became apparent.   There was a World AIDS Day event.  Elizabeth (the MCAVHN executive director) had organized an art show at the museum in Willits, and people showed up at that art show, people who had looked like ghosts the last time I’d seen them, so ill and thin, like ethereal bodies, were now walking into the museum to see the event. People really came back from the brink of death.” Since then, we have had no more than 0-2 deaths per year related to AIDS/HIV.  Our clients who are HIV positive are no longer progressing to full-blown AIDS.  The virus is sensitive to the meds, and, if people are stable enough to be able to care for themselves, they are no longer dying of AIDS, but are living into old age. Since the advent of antiretroviral medicines, the mission of Mendocino County AIDS Voluteer Network has evolved to serve members of our community with another potentially deadly blood- borne illness, Hepatitis C. to be continued… (Back to Chapter 1)