Welcome to the People with AIDS Health Group

The PWA Health Group has recently incorporated with DAAIR. Please place orders through them.

Ten years ago we started as a buyers' club for people living with HIV and AIDS. AIDS buyers' clubs started when there were no approved drugs for AIDS. People with AIDS (PWAs) got together to import promising therapies from other countries. As AIDS treatments started to get offered in the United States, advocacy became an increasingly important part of our work. And as choosing between treatment options requires useful information, we started creating AIDS treatment support programs, which have expanded enormously in the past few years. The PWA Health Group was founded in 1987 by Thomas Hannan and Michael Callen, both people with AIDS, and their doctor, Joseph Sonnabend, as a not-for-profit organization. Today we serve thousands of people living with HIV and AIDS with three programs: Treatment Education and Support, Advocacy and Public Policy, and Early Treatment Access.

Perhaps the most important work we do is our Treatment Education and Support Program. That's a formal way of saying that we put out lots of useful written treatment information, and are here to talk to you one-on-one: to answer your questions about specific treatments and infections, to help you work out individual anti-viral strategies, and, most importantly, to give you the support you deserve. You can call or drop by anytime and we will try our best to answer what we can, or steer you to someone who might have an answer.

The PWA Health Group is committed to the self-empowerment of people living with HIV and AIDS. Because we support all treatment choices of PWAs and their doctors, providing unbiased information goes hand-in-hand with access to medications. We sift through data on promising treatments, both approved and unapproved, and create fact sheets, charts, and articles in the clearest and most accessible way we can. Our treatment newsletter, NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND, comes out every two months and, less regularly, we publish our Spanish-language newsletter, NOTAS DE LA CLANDESTINIDAD. Many of our articles and fact sheets have been published in newsletters throughout the country and around the world.

We also go around the city conducting free treatment workshops for clients and staff of community-based organizations and drug treatment programs. Our Women's Treatment Project offers workshops and ongoing, personalized treatment support to positive women with drop-in treatment discussion groups, an annual Women's Treatment Conference, a Pediatric Working Group, and the continuous sharing of information.

Advocacy is another big part of what we do here at the PWA Health Group. We talk to, question, badger and confront drug companies, the FDA, and other government agencies to increase access and, sometimes, lower the prices of necessary drugs. Our advocacy work includes therapies that we carry (unapproved ones) as well as drugs that are already approved. Examples of both categories include: thalidomide for wasting and aphthous ulcers; nitazoxanide (NTZ) for cryptosporidiosis; topotecan for PML; ribavirin for hepatitis C; Crixivan, Merck's protease inhibitor; and, currently, a new anti-viral from Glaxo Wellcome called 1592. We work closely with other AIDS organizations, and often ask for the active involvement of people who like what we do.

In the 80's, people with AIDS who could afford to, travelled to Mexico, South America and Europe to bring back promising medications. Of course, most of us couldn't afford that, even for a life-saving medication, so the PWA Health Group and other buyers' clubs sprang up to bring in drugs on a collective basis -- sort of like a food co-op. And we still do through the Early Access Program. We import new therapies with compelling or interesting data from around the world and make them available at cost with summaries of the data. Over the years, we've made virtually every important antibiotic for AIDS-related infections available months to years before FDA approval, including fluconazole, clarithromycin, albendazole, azithromycin, and oral amphotericin B. We also provide pharmaceutical grade DHEA, Thioctic Acid and NAC. The list of what we carry changes over time, but the purpose is the same.

But even selling at cost, many of our therapies are expensive. Thanks to generous donors, we take 30% off the cost to anyone who's on Medicaid or Medicare. So please don't let economic concerns keep you away - talk to us and we'll see what we can do.

We openly operate the Early Treatment Access Program under the FDA's Personal Use Importation Guidance, which permits people to bring in a three months' supply of a medication approved elsewhere in the world. It sounds simple, and, aside from periodic FDA harassment, it usually is. But it's also important to remember that each time you buy something here at the PWA Health Group, you're performing a political act. Throughout the history of the AIDS crisis in the United States, people with HIV/AIDS have refused to accept the limited wisdom of our government, the medical profession, and the drug companies. We question, we argue, we confront, and, through all of this, we make individual, empowered treatment decisions that are right for us. We're proud of this history of struggle and caring, which has been critical to the treatment advances of today, and critical to the place we urgently need to get to: a cure.

The PWA Health Group has remained small, independent and personal. Let us know what's helpful to you. Come by and talk to us. Call, fax or email us with questions, suggestions, compliments, criticisms, whatever. Our job is to listen to what you need -- in terms of treatment and information, and do our best to see that you get it. Welcome.