HPH NOW, June 24, 2005, U.N. Envoy Stephen Lewis Delivers Impassioned Speech on HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Africa


	HSPH Commencement Speaker Stephen Lewis used vivid personal accounts to drive home the crushing effects of the HIV/AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa.

In his HSPH Commencement Address in the Kresge Courtyard on June 9, Stephen Lewis, Special UN Envoy for HIV-AIDS in Africa, presented a personal and wrenching picture of family devastation on that continent and the possibility for public health professionals to make a difference in survival.

A transcript of Lewis' remarks, plus audio excerpts, is available at: www.hsph.harvard.edu/commencement2005/address.html.

HSPH awarded 477 graduate degrees in public health this year. More than half of the class were women, and nearly one-third of students came from countries outside of the U.S.


	Dean Bloom greeted Vanessa Watts, who received a master’s degree in epidemiology.

Dean Barry Bloom congratulated the graduates and their families. He spoke of one of the greatest challenges in public health today: "Each of us has a responsibility to do our best to lessen the disparities in health within this country and between countries of the world." The healthy life expectancy of Americans averaged 69.3 years in 2002, compared to just 28.6 years for Sierra Leonians. The average life expectancy in six counties of Minnesota was 13 years higher than that in six counties of South Dakota in 2001.

Lewis, a former U.N. ambassador from Canada whose influence on the world community was recently noted by Time magazine, tied together several themes offered by other speakers, in a program that subtly interwove elements of the past and future, the tribal and universal, the traditional and cutting-edge, reflecting the rich cultural fabric of the School. He described in vivid detail what he sees as a desperate need for prevention, treatment, care, compassion, research, and an understanding of the moral issues surrounding the AIDS epidemic in Africa.


Student speaker Alyson Lee Burns

He focused on the tremendous toll the epidemic has taken on women in sub-Saharan Africa due to gender inequality. "We are denuding parts of the continent of its women and girls," he said. "And because of the inequality, they have no capacity to say no to predatory sexual overtures. They have no capacity to negotiate safe sex. They have no capacity to say, 'Wear a condom,' and indeed, what is emerging, which is absolutely hallucinatory, is that one of the most dangerous environments for a woman in Africa is to be married."

Prevalence rates are actually higher in sub-Saharan Africa among married women than among sexually active single women because the married women erroneously believe they are in a monogamous relationship and therefore at less risk.

"And the women do all of the care in the society," said Lewis. "They maintain and hold the society together. There is so much sophistication, knowledge, solidarity, generosity at the grass roots amongst the women in these African countries, it is beyond words to convey. And this virus is killing them in numbers that are not conveyable in human terms."


	Dean Ware congratulated Fang-Ching Sun Memorial Award winner: Ernest Ryan Guevarra.

The death toll among adult women and men has left behind a generation of orphans who are raised by surviving family members, such as grandmothers. Or, orphans become heads of households themselves, caring for younger siblings.

With riveting precision, he described the horrific impact of AIDS on families as well as individuals he met on the African continent:

• At a grade school in Zimbabwe, children told Lewis how prayer helped them cope with the many deaths they had to deal with in their young lives.

• Infected Zambian women proudly displayed a cabbage patch they built. It not only provides them with an important source of nutrition to bolster their immune systems, but will help pay for coffins if necessary, they explained to him.


MPH recipient Kyaw Lwin

Lewis sees the role of public health in the modern world as indispensable. "It goes beyond all the boundaries of the particular professional discipline, and you bring so much more," he said. "And I see it in the context of HIV and AIDS, and I see it in the context of Africa, and I think to myself how wondrous it might be if even a small handful of you participated in what the School of Public Health and Harvard already know so well in so many countries."

The HSPH Commencement ceremony opened with a moving Native American honor song offered by Tobias Vanderhoop, tribal councilman for the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head/Aquinnah, MA. The honor song was shared to recognize Harvard's historical relationship with Native American communities, as well as to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Harvard Indian School. This year's HSPH graduating class includes four Native Americans.

Student speaker Alyson Lee Burns, SM '05, Health Policy and Management, said that she had never met more passionate people than those she got to know at HSPH. She urged fellow graduates to retain their compassion for those in need.

She said that graduates need to pay attention to social and environmental contexts that influence community health, if they are to use their skills to change the world.

Alumni Association President J. Jacques Carter MD, MPH '83, said graduates could maintain their relationship with each other as well as the faculty by participating in alumni programs.

"I had the opportunity to be taught by the best faculty of public health in the world," he said. "Twenty years later, I'm still collaborating with people who were in my class at that time. Lasting bonds are created here."

Harvard Business School Dean Kim Clark attended part of the HSPH Commencement Ceremony to greet his son, Jonathan Clark, on stage during the presentation of graduates. Jonathan Clark received an SM in Health Policy and Management. Dean Clark will step down from his position on July 31 to become President of Brigham Young University-Idaho.

Dean for Academic Affairs James Ware awarded the diplomas. Harvard Medical School Associate Professor Lachlan Forrow presented the Albert Schweitzer Award.

--PHC

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