ZIMBABWE AIDS Project, ZAP, founded in 2010, is based in Victoria Falls and a HEALTH CARE ADVOCATES INT'L initiative.
ZAP partners with MoHCC to reach UNAIDS 95-95-95-[95] targets by 2030 by fighting HIV stigma, education, and administering ART and PrEP
07/20/2025
Join us Monday, @ 15:30, for Zero HIV STIGMA DAY, with GNP+, U=U Prevention Access Campaign, IAPAC and me to discuss the way forward in combatting stigma & discrimination in today’s climate.
STIGMA KILLS! WARRIORS SAVE LIVES!
03/01/2025
I just wanted to express my sadness and regrets about what our “President” has done indirectly to you, my Zimbabwean friends, by dismantling USAID and jeopardizing your antiretroviral therapy.
We have partnered with MoHCC for 14yrs and it is a disheartening atrocity, a crime against humanity, what our “leader” is doing to our allies, friends, democracies, and to all of you who have relied on the US without question…ZAP is still here to assist and we will do whatever WE can to stay alive and partnering with you. That’s MY promise—Dr. Gary Blick
02/09/2025
If you are Zimbabwean, PLEASE let’s chat about this and how Trump/Musk's actions may be directly affecting your and a family member or a friend's lives. LET US GET! We can take your stories to our Senators and Congressman and fight for our right to contiunue helping you with USAID and PEPFAR
---Dr. Gary Blick, Founder, ZAP
Several of my Republican patients seem to believe all if this is not really happening?!?! READ ON! See how the recent illegal actions are hurting our Zimbabwean friends and patients at HCAI’s Zimbabwe AIDS Project…
Today: “It is heavily, negatively affecting us. All active (HIV drug) distributions were halted, no funds, no allowances, no venue, it's a mess. Some were laid off, and they are failing to cope. Key services have been halted and there is an elevated risk of new infections”.
“Hi Gary. It’s very painful at what is currently happening. Everyone is very scared Dr, we can imagine the gains made so far being reversed, it’s unimaginable. The memories of early 2000 when people were dying in their big numbers ranging from TB, Cryptococcus meningitis, at that time HIV diagnosis meant death within a very short space of time. I personally lost my elder brother and sister. Is there chance of policy reversal by this new administration?
Our government cannot fill this gap because we really appreciate the funding was massive and life serving. Currently the minister is trying to get statistics on the possible impact but in such a short space of time the alternative funding sources will be difficult or even impossible to get.
It’s a nightmare! Millions of lives will be lost from uncontrolled HIV, OIs, Opportunistic cancers, including malaria as some programs were funded . The whole world is shocked, I have some friends in South Africa, it has the highest number of people on ART in the whole world as a country about 5.5million.
But why can’t we be allowed to use all the stocks at our disposal? It shows that the new administration does not love people and also don’t respect their rule of law as everything is being done hurriedly without following normal procedures, the instruction came as with ‘ immediate effect’ “
Despite the USAID and PEPFAR crises and the RED ALERT in Zimbabwe, our Zimbabwean support groups are more important than ever! Thank you Edward Taboka Gwebu for all of your great work and for staying positive. And of course, thanks to Dr. Kurai Ngarivume and Philip Madhodha for your unwavering support, devotion and love. You are true humanitarians 💖
Stigma Warrior Campaign is HCAI’s mission to end discrimination, cultivating community where it’s needed most.
09/18/2024
“Protect Our Aging Populations: Meeting New Challenges to Live Longer and Improve Lives”
Sorry so late, but better late than never!
We at Health Care Advocates International want you to recognize with us that today is National HIV/AIDS and Aging Awareness Day! Above is this year’s theme. And why is this soooo important?
Over 53% of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) are over 50yo, thanks to our excellent HIV treatment regimens, thanks to PLWHA taking their regimens, and thanks to the increased amount of office visits and monitoring that comes with being HIV+!
BUT (isn’t there always a “but”):
1. The HIV drugs lead to harmful side effects: weight gain/obesity, osteoporosis, kidney disease etc.
2. Aging means increased risk of developing chronic illnesses that are markedly increased in PLWHA: heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, kidney failure, cancers etc.
3. Aging PLWHA face stigma & discrimination ( ) due to continued lack of education, cultural biases, poor awareness, different but not unlike many PLWHA experience.
4. Older adults are more apt to delay getting diagnosed and may wait until they have developed AIDS-related complications!
5. We healthcare providers do not routinely ask those over 50 about their s*xual health or s*xual exploits, or may assume someone in a “married” relationship is monogamous and not at risk.
6. People over 50 themselves may not self-identify as being at risk for having or acquiring HIV.
Please help us at HCAI to fight HIV/AIDS stigma & discrimination and to eliminate the global HIV health crisis by 2030. Get yourself and your friends tested. If positive, get only treatment to prevent HIV transmission (“U=U”, undetectable = untransmissible). If negative, get on Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) to remain HIV-negative.
07/29/2024
Hello, HCAI Friends!
We would love to hear from you. Could you please be so kind as to leave HCAI a review on Google? Just click the link below.
03/12/2024
Health Care Advocates International (HCAI) is proud to support the Elton John AIDS Foundation
At HCAI, we’re partnering with EJAF working to end HIV by 2030 and shut down the stigma. Our advocacy reaches from here in the U.S. to Zimbabwe, where we have provided life-saving care to nearly 10,000 Zimbabwean people with HIV, including many children.
Measles Advisory: There has been a recent increase in measles activity internationally and in the United States. Learn More
03/10/2024
Tonight is Health Care Advocates International’s big night as one of the Elton John AIDS Foundation Oscar Viewing Party and gala’s Presenting Sponsors. I am proud to be a Benefit Chair for tonight too.
Our missions align perfectly in fighting HIV and LGBTQ stigma & discrimination with the seemingly unattainable goal of ending global HIV by 2030. HCAI’s STIGMA WARRIORS initiative ultimately aims to reduce the 37,000 annual U.S. HIV infection rate and 5,000 annual U.K. Infection rate, and spreading these successes globally to make the 2030 goal fully attainable.
Every day, the stigma towards the HIV and LGBTQ+ communities makes living a healthy, happy life a challenge. Our Stigma Warrior Campaign shines a light on these experiences through compassionate storytelling and imagery. This campaign is an extension of HCAI’s mission to end discrimination, cultivating community where it’s needed most. By sharing stories of adversity and triumph, Stigma Warriors can help others feel seen in their struggles and empower them to live as their most authentic selves.
02/07/2024
All of us at Health Care Advocates International (HCAI) & I want to acknowledge that today is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day?
This year's theme is "Engage, Educate, Empower: Uniting to End HIV/AIDS in Black Communities".
The main reason we have a “National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day” is to acknowledge another major health disparity, that is, how HIV disproportionately affects Black people.
Black Americans represent only 14% of the U.S. population, but 40% of new HIV infections, with black women accounting for 54% of all new HIV diagnoses in women. From HIV.gov: It has been estimated that if “current HIV diagnoses rates persist, about 1 in 2 black men who have s*x with men (MSM) in the United States will be diagnosed with HIV during their lifetime”. And our black MSM youth are particularly and disproportionately affected.
Remember, HIV STIGMA! It is still very prevalent. Racism, discrimination, cultural and community barriers and mistrust in the health care system may also affect whether Black people seek or receive HIV treatment & prevention services. Black women, both cis- and transgender, face additional barriers to care due to s*xism, preventing access to HIV preventative treatments like PrEP, testing services and medical care.
The National HIV/AIDS Strategy has designated Black women as a “priority population”, compelling federal agencies and other stakeholders to focus resources to support them.
Become an HCAI STIGMA WARRIOR ( https://www.hcaillc.com/advocacy-programs/stigma-warrior ). Our Stigma Warrior Campaign shines a light on your experiences through compassionate storytelling and imagery. This campaign is an extension of HCAI’s mission to end discrimination, cultivating community where it’s needed most. By sharing your and others’ stories of adversity and triumph, Stigma Warriors can help others feel seen in their struggles and empower them to live as their most authentic selves.
Call us at (203)345-0404 and just tell us you’re interested in becoming a STIGMA WARRIOR after you check out our page with the above link.
Stigma Warrior Campaign is HCAI’s mission to end discrimination, cultivating community where it’s needed most.
12/01/2023
This is my first World AIDS Day where hubby & I are off on a short re-energizing break. Today let’s not forget those who have given their lives to help others benefit from the research & development that has led us to much simpler, less toxic 2-drug antiviral therapy in pill (Dovato and Juluca) and every 8 week injection form (Cabenuva), as well as the first every 6-month subQ injection ART, lenacapravir.
And I’d like to remember those who gave their lives in the past 12 months, those whom our family at Health Care Advocates International will never never forget: Sheila, Inge, Chrissy and Mikki, and Vinny, Bob, and Ken.
Their passings remind us that, although they didn’t die from AIDS, they did give their lives due to direct and indirect complications from being HIV+, what we refer to as co-morbidities associated with HIV. HIV makes us more susceptible to cancers, kidney failure, cardiovascular disease, more COVID-related complications, diabetes, high blood pressure etc etc etc.
We have ALL of the tools available TODAY to end HIV by 2030, HCAI’s mission, ie medications to render HIV “undetectable” so it doesn’t transmit to our s*xual partners and PrEP (Pre-exposure Prophylaxis) to protect those HIV-negative from acquiring the virus.
But stigma is still our MAJOR barrier to diagnosing all of those with HIV, keeping those HIV+ on medication from staying on their medications, and recognizing those who need PrEP and are at-risk for becoming HIV+. Only 30% of those at-risk are on PrEP in the U.S. today…that is totally unacceptable!
And 30-40% of those with HIV in the U.S. are “lost to follow up”, and this is around 25% elsewhere in the world…also totally unacceptable!
Today, HCAI continues leading in fighting HIV, as well as LGBTQ+ stigma, in CT, in the USA, and in Zimbabwe.
Today, LET COMMUNITIES LEAD in fighting HIV stigma and ending global HIV by 2030.
God bless everyone involved in this critical mission 💖🙏
08/20/2023
What a beautiful honor from Senator Blumenthal and Frank Parker Recchia of Ch.12 News on this UN World Humanitariam Day. I am really honored and touched 💖
Dr. Gary Blick is the chief medical officer at Health Care Advocates International.
08/05/2023
Thank you Frank Parker Recchia for great coverage of HCAI’s SOLAR-3D study results presented in Brisbane Australia. And thanks to the International AIDS Society for the honor of selecting our study for oral presentation. We’ll done Elysia, Drew, Giacomo, and Lei Fang of Pharstat.
A two-year study conducted by the nonprofit Health Care Advocates International found that taking two drugs daily works as well as taking three or four, even when patients have developed a resistance to their drug regimens.
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Welcome to our Zimbabwe AIDS Project page. With the onset of COVID-19 infection on the African continent, and specifically in Zimbabwe, we wanted to create a social media page where ZIM and others can share their stories, questions, and anxieties. But first let me tell you who I am, we are, and how we got here...
I have been an HIV/AIDS and General Internal Medicine specialist and clinical researcher in the United States since 1987, after finishing medical school/internship at the University of Miami Medical School/Jackson Memorial Hospital and completing my medical residency at Yale University School of Medicine/Greenwich Hospital and prior to the launch of the first HIV drug, AZT.
I first visited Africa for the Durban International AIDS Conference in 2000, fully expecting that this would be my first and last trip to the continent. After safari in Botswana and visiting Victoria Falls (VF), Zimbabwe (ZIM) with a man named “C.L.”, a resident of VF, I stopped in Gaborone Botswana to visit the main hospital and see the toll that the HIV/AIDS crisis was taking on the Batswana. After visiting a ward of 137 women, all unresponsive, mostly comatose, and awaiting death from AIDS, my heart was literally torn from my chest! While crying on the flight from Gaborone to Durban SA, my first non-profit, Global Health Organization (GHO), was created with the goal of opening the first Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) clinic to combat HIV/AIDS on the continent in Gaborone.
Together with my Executive Director and good friend, Alon Marom, and with the support of our Ambassador-At-Large and my mentor, Former US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, as well as Board of Director members, Quincy Jones and Bruce Roberts, we raised $250,000 at our United Nations fundraiser in July 2001, set to open our Botswana clinic on Oct 12, 2001 with Dr. Diana Dickinson. However, 9/11 occurred one month prior, and our dreams as quickly as they began. GHO closed its doors in 2004.
When I arrived back in the U.S. from Durban, C.L. had written to me to share that he was HIV-positive and his wife was pregnant but “not yet tested”. Sadly, she tested positive and they lost their baby to a probable AIDS-related infection after 2 months. C.L. was to be one of our first patients in Gaborone. I began sending an HIV medication, Trizivir, to C.L. and his wife, telling them not to try again for a child until I contacted them. Blind to CD4 cell counts or viral load tests, 6 months later, I told the couple they could try to conceive a child. In July 2002, my godson, T. Gary L. was born HIV-negative, years before prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) with antiretroviral therapy became standard of care.
After visiting VF in July 2009 for my godson’s 7th birthday party, the time seemed right to lend a hand in Zimbabwe. In 2010, I founded my former non-profit, World Health Clinicians, and flew to VF to create what then became known as BEAT AIDS PROJECT ZIMBABWE (BAPZ), now Zimbabwe AIDS Project (ZAP).
Along with:
1) my current non-profit, Health Care Advocates Int’l (HCAI) Creative Director, Thomas Evans, and then-volunteers and now HCAI CEO and Director of Global Prevention Outreach & Advocacy, Pattie McKnight and Lenny Courtemanche,
2) our ZAP Country Director, Patrick Hazangwe M.D. PhD, Administrator Philip Madhodha, HIV Advocate Sipho Mahlangu (original founding member of BAPZ), and Pharmacy Assistant Gideon Makatose, as well as BAPZ founding members Cryface Lusinga and Priscilla Mhlanga, and
3) the full support of ZIM leaders including, but not limited to, Ambassador Chitsaka Chipaziwa, MoHCC Permanent Secretary Brigadier General (Retired) Dr. Gerald Gwinji, then-CEO National AIDS Council Dr. Tapuwa Magure and NAC Operations Mgr Raymond Yekeye, and former Provincial Medical Director Nyasha Masuka and District Medical Director Wisdom Kurauone and VF Mayor Sifiso Mpofu, as well as Executive Committee Chair Martin Mhlanga and the entire ZAP Executive Committee, as well as hundreds of others in the MoHCC, District Health Executives and residents of VF and Matebeleland North:
we have:
1) built and given the people of VF a state-of-the-art general medical and HIV clinic,
2) tested over 10,000 ZIM via our enormously successful HIV ADVOCATES/ HIV EQUAL national musical festivals and testing events,
3) initiated ART for over 8,600 ZIM, and
4) performed thousands of viral load analyses with the Roche Taqman96 that we brought to VF, all with the goals of:
> achieving the UNAIDS “90-90-90”,
> fighting stigma & discrimination associated with HIV/AIDS,
> advocating for those who are underserved, marginalized and disenfranchised, and
> reducing the morbidity and mortality associated with HIV/AIDS for the people of Zimbabwe.
Although we launch this page at the onset of COVID-19 in ZIM, please feel free to use this page for discussion of issues including HIV, stigma and discrimination, patient advocacy, community connection, and anything else you desire to educate others or learn...
