Lynne Meyerkord has been working at the AIDS project of the Ozarks, or APO, in Springfield for 37 years and is now the Executive Director.
The organization was created in the early days of the AIDS epidemic to help people suffering from HIV and AIDS. She spoke about how HIV has changed in the nearly 40 years she’s been working in the field.
Missouri Health Talks gathers Missourians’ stories of access to healthcare in their own words.
Lynne Meyerkord: I think the biggest change I have seen is that there are many more folks that are heterosexual that have gotten the virus.
There was a time, and I don't I couldn't tell you what the numbers are right now, but 80% of the women we worked with that were positive thought they were in a monogamous relationship.
And, you know, while sex is very fun to have, many people don't want to talk about it ahead of time – talk about what risks are, talk about, you know, if their partner has previously had an STI, if they have HIV, all that kind of thing – It's very difficult for folks to talk about that.
So, there's still a lot of surprises for people. They didn't plan on getting an STI, but now they've got one.
I think too, the advent of PrEP is very important, but that means people are having more sex without condoms because they don't have to worry about HIV.
Well – PrEP does not protect you from all these other infections and proper condom use can prevent a lot of them, but we're seeing a drop in condom use.
And, you know, now that there's hope when someone's diagnosed, I mean, even if they have full blown AIDS, there's still hope – very much so – to get the virus under control to where it's not destroying your body anymore.
"While sex is very fun to have, many people don't want to talk about it ahead of time – talk about what risks [there] are."Lynne Meyerkord
I think the stigma has lessened. Overall, things have certainly improved in that regard.
Not done yet. There's still much stigma and discrimination, but we've tried to adapt to that too.
We have a program where we'll mail out condoms to people. They don't have to come in the office to get them.
We had a program where we would mail out home tests. That's harder because you you'd have no way of knowing what happened there, and if the person is quietly suffering – they got a positive test and they're afraid to tell anyone and won't get any help – because eventually they'll die.
95% if they are not treated, will die.
Very – I mean that the mortality rate is incredibly reduced, but we still have folks that have mental illness issues, substance use issues, and it's a lot harder for them to stay on track with their meds and to make sure that they're taking the meds the way they need to to keep both themselves healthy and any of their needle sharing partners or sexual partners [safe].
So, yes, it's still, it's still an issue. There used to be around 50,000 new cases a year, I think now it's down to maybe 30,000.
And we still see pretty consistently, between 30 and 50 new cases a year in our region. So, yes, it's still a thing, and again, the most important piece is that people get tested and get into treatment because there's something we can do now.
There's no need to die at a very young age.
