In the past decade, Thomas Campbell has visited Zimbabwe about a dozen times. He’s lost track of exactly how many trips he’s made to the African nation, but it’s safe to say he’s racked up some frequent-flier miles.
It’s also safe to say he doesn’t travel to Zimbabwe for fun in the sun.
Campbell is director of the Colorado Center for AIDS Research at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine.
Zimbabwe has become a passion for Campbell, a former Air Force brat who settled in Colorado 18 years ago. Zimbabwe has a population of 13,349,000. An estimated one in four adults is infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Think about the people in your neighborhood and apply that math to them.
“It’s devastating,” Campbell said. “HIV is a huge public-health problem in that part of the world.
“We in the United States should care about it not just because it’s a humanitarian issue, but because it’s also related to the political and economic health of the U.S. If this goes unchecked, it could destabilize southern Africa.”
And that’s why this evening, Campbell is helping with an art-auction fundraiser for ZATA, the Denver- based Zimbabwe AIDS Treatment Assistance Project. Since its inception four years ago, the nonprofit group has worked to distribute AIDS medicine to clinics in Zimbabwe.
Why Zimbabwe?
“I first went there in 1998, because it had one of the worst AIDS situations in Africa,” Campbell said. “The suffering of the children was especially heartbreaking.”
Tuesday morning, Campbell showed me some of the pieces to be auctioned. They were stunning.
One was a brilliantly hued painting of a market scene in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, showing women laying out produce for sale under lavender jacaranda trees. The artist is Peter Kwangware, a painter in his mid-30s.
The other piece was a story quilt depicting a wedding, its 15 three-dimensional panels hand-stitched by women from the village of Wheya.
Stone sculptures from Zimbabwe’s Shona people, which are famed in African-art circles, also will be auctioned.
Proceeds from the auction will buy anti-retroviral drugs for AIDS patients.
“Given that a year’s treatment for one patient with these drugs can be bought for $200, even raising $20,000 would serve a hundred people,” Campbell said.
The public auction will be held today from 5:30 to 9 p.m. at 722 E. Seventh Ave. in Capitol Hill. Admission is $75.
Despite the wretched situation in Zimbabwe, Campbell and his colleagues here and overseas report progress.
Four years ago, only 2 percent of Zimbabwe AIDS patients received anti-retroviral medicine. The World Health Organization has upped that number to 17 percent today.
“I think that’s tremendous,” Campbell said.
Ten years ago in Zimbabwe, a diagnosis of Kaposi sarcoma, the common AIDS-related cancer, was a death sentence.
Half of all people diagnosed with Kaposi sarcoma died within six months. Now 80 percent of sufferers are alive two years after diagnosis.
“More people die of AIDS in Africa than they do from malaria and tuberculosis,” Campbell said. “But we’re much more optimistic now. That optimism isn’t just among health care providers; you find it in the people too.”
William Porter’s column runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 303-954-1877 or wporter@denverpost.com.
