The Access to Essential Medicines Expo, sponsored by Doctors Without Borders, visited UNM last week trying to raise awareness of the crisis people living in developing countries without adequate medical care face.
The walkway outside the UNM Bookstore was scattered with flytraps; attached were information cards about the parasites associated with the tsetse fly and other statistics.
By spinning the multicolored Wheel of Misfortune, participants contracted one of five diseases: malaria, sleeping sickness, kala azar, tuberculosis or HIV/AIDS. Inside the 48-foot tractor-trailer stationed in the visitor’s parking lot, placards in two rooms explained the diseases’ symptoms. In the last room, volunteer aid workers explained available treatments for the illness and the results if left untreated.
Meggan Zsemlye, a Doctors Without Borders volunteer and staff physician at the UNM Health Sciences Center who spent six months in Sri Lanka last year, said that except for HIV, the diseases were highlighted because they kill or disable millions of people in the world, but little or no research exists to treat them.
Zsemlye said HIV was chosen because the medication to treat it is unaffordable or unavailable.
“People in the world’s poorest countries have limited or no access to medicines that treat infectious diseases because the medicines are too expensive, highly toxic or are no longer produced,” Zsemlye said. “The Expo’s goal is to spark drug companies to do more research to make medication affordable.”
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Viviane Renard, a nurse and midwife originally from Belgium now living in Albuquerque, first became involved with Doctors Without Borders in Somalia in 1987.
“I like working with this organization because it is nonreligious, nongovernmental and nonpolitical,” Renard said.
Matt Magnuson, a College of Education doctoral student, said the expo helped him realize that malaria is a serious problem.
“Learning about the other diseases was also interesting. I didn’t know how widespread they were,” Magnuson said.
Participant Deborah Muhlberg “contracted” sleeping sickness and said she knew nothing about the affliction before attending the expo.
“The displays were accessible and understandable — there was no agenda except getting medications where they’re needed,” she said.
The exhibit will next journey to California and Oregon.
