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| Campaigns | Health GAP Regrets to Announce the Death of AIDS Warrior, Dr. Alan Berkman |
| The US Global AIDS Plan | www.alanberkman.com PRESS RELEASE Contact: Jennifer Flynn, (917) 517-5202 HEALTH GAP FOUNDER, DR. ALAN BERKMAN, HAS DIED Long time civil rights and AIDS activist loses fight against cancer
June 5, 2009 New York, NY: Health GAP (Global Access Project) is deeply saddened to announce that Dr. Alan Berkman has lost his personal fight against cancer this evening. Dr. Berkman was a founder of Health GAP; he conceived of the organization as one that interpreted lack of access in developing countries to the HIV treatment commonly available in the United States, as genocide. In 1998, he made this link after participating in a group of international consultants that helped the South African government develop HIV and TB prevention programs for the mentally ill and then traveling to the Dachau concentration camps. At the time, the idea of universal access to lifesaving AIDS medications in developing countries was dismissed as a impossible and Utopian. Now, with nearly 4 million people around the world on treatment, we see that people like Alan, who dared to speak out and take action, have helped transform access to live saving health services around the world.
Of course, for those of us who knew him, it is no surprise that Alan was such a person. As a young student, he saw Kwame Toure (then known as Stokely Carmichael) speak. He realized that he had to do something to stand in solidarity with people of color around the country and world who were suffering from a racist system. Alan has never let that commitment wane. He traveled to the poorest county in the United States and opened a medical clinic. Answering a call for solidarity, he and his partner, Barbara Zeller, snuck behind government barricades to provide medical care to Native American Freedom Fighters at Wounded Knee. When asked by Fortune Society, he provided medical care to inmates wounded during the Attica Uprising. He also testified about the conditions that he witnessed there before elected officials. He was arrested and spent years of his life in prison after he removed the bullet from the leg of an activist. It was his refusal to testify before a federal grand jury about the medical treatment that ultimately led him to spend years in prison, away from his loved ones.
However, while in prison, Alan advocated for and with his fellow inmates. He used his own life threatening illness as an opportunity to expose poor medical treatment offered to all inmates in our federal correctional facilities, ultimately speaking to CNN and before Congress. Upon release, he continued to speak out about the poor conditions in our prisons and advocated for freedom for all political prisoners.
Alan then went to provide medical care in the poorest parts of New York. He became Medical Director of Highbridge Woodycrest, one of the first skilled nursing facilities designed for people living with AIDS. Alan then went to Columbia University School of Public Health where he continued to engage in research and implement lifesaving programs around the world for the 33 million people living with HIV.
Alan has a wide circle of friends and family including his long-time partner, Barbara Zeller, his daughters Harriet and Sarah, friends such as Laura Whitehorn and Susie Day and certainly all of us here at Health GAP. All of the victories that are part of the work of the global AIDS activist movement belong to Alan and we wish to share with the world the enormity of his contributions. Jamila Headley, a young Health GAP steering committee member and AIDS activist, described Alan’s life as “so well lived, firmly rooted in a genuine commitment to social justice that led him beyond concern to action, which he sustained for his entire life. His death is such a loss, but he has truly given all of us so much -his time, his passion, his friendship and advice, his ideas, his investment in making the expansion of treatment access possible.”
Details about the public memorial to be scheduled soon will be posted at www.healthgap.org. Donations should be made, in lieu of flowers, to Health GAP (please write Alan Berkman Fund in the memo line) and mailed to 429 West 127th Street, 2nd Floor or donate on line at www.healthgap.org/donate.htm (again, please write Alan Berkman Fund in the memo section)
Just two weeks ago, Health GAP honored Dr. Alan Berkman with the 2009 Global Health Justice Award along with Dr. David Hoos. In the future, this award will be renamed the Dr. Alan Berkman Global Health Justice Award in honor of this great leader, organizer and AIDS warrior. Press Release Contact: Jennifer Flynn, +1-917-517-5202 or jflynn@healthgap.org ### |
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