AIDS Treatment: Reaching The People?

Directors
Fabrice Castanier and Benoit Finck
Etat d’Urgence Productions (EUP), Paris, France
118 minutes

Synopsis
AIDS Treatment: Reaching the People? follows people living with HIV/AIDS in Guatemala, Thailand, and Malawi whose lives have been transformed thanks to antiretroviral (ARV) treatment in medical programs run by Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). The film portrays several patients and their families as they struggle with the day to day challenges of accessing and taking treatment, facing stigma, and maintaining their lives, as well as the struggles of the medical teams who find themselves faced with overwhelming need, limited resources, and varying levels of commitment from local health authorities.

"The film personalises the epidemic with real people, puts faces and names on their plight, drives the point home in a way that no article or news piece can ever hope to. The unapologetic, unsentimental tone was a refreshing and welcome antidote to the overly commodified, reductive packages this crisis usually gets crammed into. Treating this story and its characters with such dignity, patience and beauty, without ever assuming a tired left wing posture or deteriorating into bombast or polemic is a coup unto itself. These filmmakers are very talented and have created a timeless, sad but important and hopeful gaze at this tragedy." Jason Hreno, writer/director based in Los Angeles

Among the many remarkable people we meet are a young monk and former drug user in Thailand who has recently enrolled in an MSF treatment program; a young Guatemalan man whose treatment was interrupted when he left for the US for several months and who is now hoping to begin therapy again; and an entire family in Malawi, all on ARVs, whom we meet as their counselor explains the importance of adherence, particularly for the child, who has missed a dosage. We also sit in on meetings with local advocates in Guatemala on how best to mobilize people living with HIV/AIDS; watch as people living with HIV/AIDS conduct community education in rural Malawi; and listen in on conversations at a hospital based clinic in Thailand as doctors and administrators prepare to take over the HIV/AIDS clinic from MSF.

By exploring from close up the daily realities of medical teams and patients on the frontlines of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, the film illustrates the urgent need for governments to expand access to ARV treatment to people living with HIV/AIDS. MSF treats 23,000 people with ARV therapy in 27 countries using generic medicines and simplified regimens. Yet the majority of people with HIV/AIDS around the world do not receive effective treatment, and six million of them will die if they do not receive ARVs immediately. So what can be done to scale up treatment?