In the 1980s, when the disease that would eventually be called acquired immune deficiency syndrome or AIDS first entered the public record as it began infecting mostly gay men in San Francisco and New York, so widespread was the hysteria and fear it provoked—and so entrenched the prejudice against the gay population—that the right-wing government of then President Ronald Reagan refused to even acknowledge the looming health crisis.
Reagan remained silent for years as the death toll climbed; and without any official government effort to study and check the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, the organism that causes the disease, the epidemic would claim the lives of tens of thousands of Americans. When he finally did say something about the issue, in the twilight of his second term in 1987, the statistics looked grim: some 21,000 Americans dead and over 36,000 others living with the disease. And AIDS was by then in 113 countries, where more than 50,000 cases had been detected.
In those desperate years, it was left to many heroic individuals to raise the red flag about the epidemic and shout for help. The activist and author Larry Kramer started an organization to lobby for money and resources. Various doctors in the United States and France raced against time to discover the virus and learn more about its properties. Lawyer Geoffrey Bowers would bring discrimination against people living with HIV to the legal realm when he filed, and won, one of the first cases against the practice. And in entertainment, one woman took up the cause and fought for it for the rest of her life: Elizabeth Taylor.
Routinely called the most beautiful woman in the world during her prime as a top Hollywood actress, Taylor had, by the 1980s, become a dowager figure, all but retired from the movies. But the legendary beauty soon plunged into full-time HIV/AIDS activism when her good friend, actor Rock Hudson, succumbed to the disease. Taylor is now credited for her dogged, pioneering work in fighting for more research into treatments of those living with HIV, and ways of prevention for those at risk of contracting it. She testified before the US Congress, cofounded two important foundations on AIDS research, and earmarked the proceeds of the sales of her perfume, one of the world’s bestselling scents, for her beloved cause.
Taylor’s embrace of HIV/AIDS advocacy was timely, tireless and consequential; by using her celebrity to champion a cause that many others didn’t want to touch out of hostility and prejudice toward a community traditionally discriminated against, she paved the way for other boldface names—Bono, Barbra Streisand, Princess Diana of the United Kingdom—to lend their names and rally more people to the fight as well, eventually forcing officialdom to act with greater urgency and commitment against the disease.
Somebody like Taylor is badly needed in the Philippines, which now appears to be where the United States was in the 1980s—a nation in denial about a growing epidemic in its midst. According to the World Health Organization no less, the Philippines has the fastest-growing HIV rate in the world. While the country managed to dodge the worst of the worldwide AIDS crisis in previous decades, the Department of Health reported “a total of 29,079 HIV infections in the country” in October last year, wrote The Atlantic, with “more than 24,000 of those cases… detected in just the last five years. At this current rate, the DOH predicts that the number of HIV infections in the Philippines could reach 133,000 by 2022.”
It remains a massive undertaking to urge people to know more about HIV, as a first step, to get themselves tested. So it’s welcome news that, on top of her mention of the need for greater HIV awareness at the globally telecast pageant a few weeks ago, among the first things Miss Universe Pia Wurtzbach mentioned upon her return to the country is that she herself will undergo testing to encourage more people to do the same—and in so doing, combat the stigma many still attach to the procedure. “If I take the first step, perhaps others can follow suit,” Wurtzbach said.
With the immense fame she’s gained from her victory, Wurtzbach’s championing of HIV advocacy should prove to be significant in adding to the heroic—but still not enough—efforts of the thousands of unsung Filipino volunteers and health practitioners who currently toil in the frontlines of this epidemic. She’s the first celebrity of her caliber to specifically bat for HIV awareness; may she not be the last.