Last year, Christchurch was engulfed by a devastating earthquake that claimed over one hundred and eighty lives. How have HIV+ and PLWAs dealt with the epidemic in that city? Good question.

At present, we don’t know. I imagine that the AIDS Foundation and AIDS Epidemiology Group are compiling long-term research results on the impact and aftermath of the quake and its consequences on the lives and health of HIV+ people and PLWAs, but as yet, we can only extrapolate from Hurricane Katrina in the United States, which was a similar magnitude disaster that engulfed the metropolitan centre of New Orleans. As a consequence, much of the scholarship about natural disasters and HIV/AIDS originates from that context.

There are limits to its applicability and effectiveness. Due to rampant neoliberal ideology, the United States privatised its Federal Emergency Management Agency and shortfunded it due to its obsession with the War on Terrorism. As a result, the crisis hit the city hard. Essential health, transport routes, medical facilities, sanitation and stable housing were affected by the hurricane, and the effects were exacerbated due to the absence of comprehensive welfare state infrastructure and public health service within the United States.  Moreover, local states also cut back their commitments to civil defence and emergency relief services and there is wide disparity in mean state incomes and poverty levels within the United States itself.

Fortunately, Christchurch and New Zealand were not quite that badly off- to its credit, the Key administration recognised that its welfare retrenchment and privatisation plans would have to sidestep Christchurch. Thus, not all of the Hurricane Katrina research data is applicable to Christchurch and the situation of HIV+ people and PLWAs there, and it is also affected by ethnicity, class, geography and cognitive or psychiatric disabilities. All of this affects the ability of affected individuals and groups to negotiate and receive access to healthcare services and remedial medication.  Fortunately too, New Zealand has antidiscrimination legislation that covers sexual orientation, HIV/AIDS and disability status.  Whether that has been adversely affected by government attacks on unfair dismissal laws and ninety day provisional employment legislation is open to conjecture, as well as how that will affect HIV+/PLWA individuals in its turn.

“Social vulnerability” theory was originally designed to deal with the consequences of natural disasters in the development and NGO foreign aid profession. What insights might it provide us with? As with the United States and Hurricane Katrina, there are questions of applicability and diversity of populations affected by HIV/AIDS.  Some middle-class women and men might be more able to quickly negotiate healthcare evaluation, diagnosis and access to medication or psychotherapeutic services than others.  One might therefore expect the transgender community’s poorer members, low-income individuals, the cognitively (learning and behaviourally disabled), people living with mental illness, the itinerant homeless, Maori and Pacific Islanders to all be more adversely affected disruption of access to medication and medical facilities, psychological stress and other factors. Much would depend on the intersection of these life experiences and their cumulative effects on individual lives.

I should caution that this is an inferential snapshot of what the picture of Christchurch, natural disaster and HIV/AIDS needs might look like. Until NZAF and NZAEG conduct the neccessary research, or are funded to do so, actual conditions remain a question mark.

For what it is worth, however, here are roughly applicable resources from Hurricane Katrina and other sources provided last year in response to the disaster:

References:

Marci Eads: Marginalised Groups in Times of Crisis: Identity, Needs and Response: Boulder, Colorado: University of Colorado Boulder Natural Hazards Centre and Applications Research: Quick Response Research Report 152 /2002:

http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/research/qr/qr152/qr152.html

[How 9/11 affected New York LGBT communities]

 Summary of Marci Eads Paper:

Dr Eads paper dealt with the consequences of 9/11 for the New York LGBT communities. She identified primary service needs, service provision shift and readjustment in demand and changed service provision as key issues. She analyses what tensions exist between desire for public and sexuality and other identity-specific social and health service needs within LGBT communities, as well as adequacy of generalist organisations in response to specific LGBT needs.

Fortunately, the Relationships (Statutory References) Act 2005 should have taken care of ‘family’ and ’spousal’ definitions in the context of LGBT quake victims, survivors and their families, and their eligibility for government services and benefits contingent on such definitions. Such discrimination did exist in the context of post-9/11 disaster relief and response, angering many LGBT community members in its wake. 

Her research consisted of structured interviews with LGBT community leaders in New York LGBT community venues. I

 Much of the rest deals specifically with HIV/AIDS needs in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:

RA Clark et al: “Six Months Later: Effect of Hurricane Katrina on Healthcare for People Living with HIV/AIDS in New Orleans” AIDS Care: 2006: 18 Supplement 1: s 59-61

Nancy Beckerman and Charles Auerbach: “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and HIV/AIDS: A Snapshot of Co-Occurrence” Social Work in Health Care: 49: 8: 2010: 687-702

“New Orleans: Post-Katrina HIV/AIDS Population”: AIDS Alert 23: 10: 2008: 112.

“Hurricane Katrina and HIV-Related Information” AIDS Treatment News: 26.06.2008: 414: 2-4.

 H K Reilly et al: “Effect of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder on HIV/AIDS Progression Following Hurricane Katrina” AIDS Care: 21: 10: 10.01.09: 1298-1305.