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afrol.com, 20 November - Over 25 million a month pass by their information service about HIV and AIDS. Also Africans have started to find the world's largest HIV/AIDS website a useful source. "Most people are shocked to see all that AEGiS accomplishes with a staff of only three," says Jeff Greer, Executive Director of AEGiS, also eager to reach a broader audience on the continent most affected by the pandemic. - AIDS Education Global Information System (AEGiS), a non-profit organization, was originally conceived in the mid-1980s as an informational response to the global AIDS epidemic, explains Jeff Greer. "This pandemic has spread more widely and rapidly than any other disease in medical history, accounting for over 34.3 million infections, 18.8 million deaths, and the orphaning of 13.2 million children by the end of 1999. Over 70% of each of these statistical totals takes place in Sub-Saharan Africa. We have tried to reach this global community via the Internet." Sometimes I get carried away by a non-governmental organisation (NGO) and its dedication to the good work. At afrol.com, we are in contact with a lot, but they don't get me involved - I think it is due to their lack of dedication and their intellectual distance to the issue. I once offered Doctors without Borders' cheaper drugs campaign free advertising on afrol.com, but they didn't even bother to answer. I was carried away about the lack of rights for the millions of internally displaced, but couldn't keep it up when the NGO's kept talking about the number of "IDPs" (=internally displaced person) in their intellectual, distanced terms. It was different with Sister Mary Elizabeth and Jeff at AEGIS. I fell for them. The largest HIV/AIDS website in the world is run by three persons from a room in home of Sister Mary Elizabeth's parents' home in the US. It was founded as a bulletin-board service in the mid-1980s and now attracts over 25 million hits per month. It has won numerous awards, including the American Medical Association's Best of the Web, and was nominated to UNESCO "Memory of the World" last year.
- Well... , he says and presents us with a resume of the organisation's history. "AEGiS was one of the first and it began in a rather strange way. Sr. Mary Elizabeth, who in the 80s was tending cows (!) founded AEGiS. She was living in a small community in Missouri. She came across a young man who obviously was suffering from Kaposi's sarcoma - a late stage symptom of AIDS. In conversation with him she realized the problems of people with AIDS living in remote areas. She felt that these folks could be served by Internet access." He continues: "So our focus comes from trying to build a database that could be accessed by anyone with a computer anywhere in the world. We have now built that database into over 700,000 documents that are all keyword searchable. Its one of the largest databases in the world and it documents the epidemic right from the beginning. It includes a lot more than just medical information. There are many social, political, and economic issues to this disease." Sister Mary Elizabeth adds that "One of our missions is to preserve for all eternity a complete and full documentation of how humanity, at the end of the 20th century, and into the next millennium, faced and dealt with what has been described as the worst pandemic since Biblical times in both dimension and scope. This goal has resulted in AEGiS recently being nominated to UNESCO's 'Memory of the World Programme'." Mr. Greer underlines the global mission of AEGIS. "We have also been particularly focused on the HIV/AIDS as a world crisis. AIDS is not just a gay disease or a US disease," he says, addressing the US media. "We have tried to design our site so that any one would feel comfortable there. Gay people should feel comfortable there as well as a Muslim woman from Northern Africa. AEGiS is especially for the isolated whether that is geographical or social." Of course, in the US some 45% of the population has access to Internet. In most African countries, the rate is close to zero. Thus we where a bit surprised that AEGIS also sees Africans as an important group of users. - What we have found though is that there is more access than most people think, Mr. Greer answers. "Recently I was in Jamaica and there were cyber-cafes all over the place. I am told the same is true all throughout Africa. It always amazes me how technology often exists side by side with poverty." AEGiS sends out daily news via e-mail to over 3500 users. "Recently we had word that a health care worker in Vietnam after he had received these updates was faxing them out to other health clinics all over the country," Mr. Greer tells. Also AEGiS has done several things to help make our site more available to remote users. "For one thing we carry very few graphics. The more graphics you carry the longer the download time," he explains. "This places the burden of high telephone costs on these users. So there is not a lot of glitter. Secondly, we continue to make improvements in our programming to make it more accessible to a wide range of browsers especially the low-tech ones." The media are dominated by American and European players, especially on the Internet. And these, of course, focus on their homelands. So afrol asked if AEGIS also was able to obtain information relevant to Africans. - Absolutely! says Mr. Greer. "We receive data from over 50 regular sources as well as material from daily searches. Not only do we carry many international journals we have city newspapers such as the Sunday Times from South Africa, information from IRIN and PANOS which cover Africa. And of course afrol.com now contributes to our database! Thank you very much! I can't think of a day when Africa is not in our daily news and of course all of it is keyword searchable." Describing the "African services" of AEGIS, Mr. Greer explains: "Not only is there medical information about each country but there is an enormous amount of information about political events that are shaping the war against AIDS in Africa. There is news about drug pricing problems, about how war effects combating the disease. We had complete coverage of the recent Durban conference. Often material appears at our site well before it shows up in the US news media. We find that many of our users are researchers for all sorts of institutions." - How do you get these resources? - AEGiS has always been dedicated to delivery of this information absolutely free, Mr Greer answers. "There is no fee for using AEGiS, not even a registration. We ask various news and publishing entities to make their archives available to us voluntarily. For the most part they help out. There are some who for commercial reasons keep their information to themselves. Anyone who would like to have their data archived at AEGiS just needs to contact us." Imagining a "public library" of over 700,000 documents, made accessible to a worldwide audience, a huge organisation, spending millions of dollars comes into mind. Not so. It is rather the dedication of a small group of humanitarians, headed by a nun working at un-Christian hours, which creates an unbelievable environment of productivity. But still - such an organisation must be financed? - We receive substantial funding from Roxane Laboratories, Inc, Jeff Greer explains. "We also receive funding from iMetrikus, Inc, who make software that is an electronic medical health record keeping system, and the National Library of Medicine. We also receive donations from individuals. We could use more funding of course. Most people are shocked to see all that AEGiS accomplishes with a staff of only three. By my calculations AEGiS is running at least at only 20-25% of the cost similar sites are funded at," the Executive Director proudly states. Sister Mary Elizabeth adds that she asks everybody to "help to complete and maintain the history of the pandemic. AEGiS is not a completed archive, rather it has been described as the pandemic's 'Global Village Depository', constantly growing, and reported by the local societies point of view, using their own current media and press report on their societies' cultural, ethnic, and social perceptions and response to the pandemic." It is always astonishing to meet really dedicated persons, because their great capacity. Sister Mary Elizabeth's personal history, from a cow tendering nun to a web designer, founding the world's largest HIV/AIDS website, underlines this. We were, however, not close to be the first impressed by these dedicated humanitarians, as the free admittance of AIDS-related articles to AEGiS by moneymaking media like Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France Press clearly documents. afrol.com thanks Jeff Greer and Sister Mary Elizabeth for taking some of their precious time to talk to us.
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