 That's what you were talking about. None of us, she was, uh, she was, uh, not going to hair. She was, uh, she was, uh, not going to hair. She was, uh, not going to hair. She was, uh, not going to hair. She was, uh, not gonna hair. She was, uh, not going to hair. All right. How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? As MC, I think my task is to keep things moving and on task. We gather this evening. Thank you, first of all, for taking time out of your busy schedules. In the holiday season, when things tend to get really busy, and I know that there's a lot on your plate, but it's important that we gather to remember. To remember those who have passed. To remember those who continue to carry the burden that we are effective with HIV. We gather to remember those who are quite possibly alone, have no one to turn to. And we gather in hope. Hope for our brothers and sisters who are in need. Hope for our cure. And hope in the sense that we as a people can use our gifts, our talents, our abilities, whatever it is that the Lord has entrusted us to serve and to help others who are infected or who have AIDS. So tonight, I welcome you. I welcome you in the name of all those different organizations who came together to plan World AIDS Day here in San Antonio in 2016. So welcome, welcome, welcome. At this time, we will have an interpretive dance by the Axe HIV Ministry. To speak the names of loved ones. Anthony W. Elizabeth S. Sylvia G. Ray P. C. Christian C. Daniel R. Louis S. Denise E. Chris M. J. Richard S. Harry S. Jose M. Benny G. Bertha M. Jim I. Rick M. My best friend, Nathan. Nicholas Angelena. Sharon, any names that you wish to describe? Chris Hernandez. Her name is Yola. Paul Mathew. Nathan Jones. That big. Kimberly Barth. Rachel Wright. Albert Montemont. President. Randy P. Lee Hubert. Bonnie Baker. Robert Harris. Just like the past would be. You are sons and daughters, brothers, sisters, aunts, and all your friends. And so we remember tonight. We remember that. And because we remember them, they continue. And so it's important to remember. I guess speakers probably would not hate to say everything that I'm going to say about her. But again, that's what happens when you don't ask your sandwiches. You can do things that people don't want you to do. Dr. Telia Bullock is the medical director of the University Health System, FFAC. Telia Bullock is the medical director of the University Health System, FFACTS clinic. And is on the faculty and infectious diseases at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. She received her medical degree from the University of Texas Medical School and has been in practice for more than 20 years. She's an internal medical doctor, certified by the American Board of Internists and an HIV specialist. The FFACTS clinic, family focused AIDS and clinical treatment services, is an outpatient facility of the University Health System that treats individuals with HIV AIDS. Dr. Bullock, along with the staff of six physicians, receives and provides care to more than 2,000 infected patients. Under Dr. Bullock's leadership, the FFACTS clinic not only provides medical care, but also offers therapy for mental health issues and counseling to deal with other problems like partner needs, domestic violence, housing, and nutritional needs. The San Antonio Chapter of the Human Rights Campaign honored Dr. Bullock with the Chuck Jordan Award in 2013. This award is presented annually by the HRC San Antonio to an individual who has demonstrated a lifetime of advocacy for an issue or cause that has an impact on the city's LGBT community. Dr. Bullock began her 17 years of service to the community during a time when equal rights and access to medical care could not be taken for granted for the LGBT community. She often has gone beyond the top duty to provide and support the commitment of same sex couples to have equal and informed healthcare. She works tirelessly to promote the good health of the community by providing the highest quality of care to patients living with HIV AIDS. She is dedicated to teaching the next generation of healthcare professionals the best medical practice with emphasis on training the LGBT patient-centered care. Dr. Bullock has been recognized with service awards from B-Dates, San Antonio AIDS Foundation, and ACT's Ministry. She has earned the widespread respect of others in the San Antonio HIV treatment community. Dr. Bullock has been a champion for the local HIV community for years. She may be responsible for caring for 60% of the HIV community in San Antonio. She spends so much time with each patient, learning not only about their medical condition, but more so about who they are as a person. Not only is she a compassionate care provider to her patients, she is a major supporter of local AIDS service organizations. I invite you to join me in welcoming Dr. Bullock. We live, we hope. This is the 35th year since the first published reports of what came to be known as HIV AIDS. This viral infection has cost us 35 million human lines worldwide and is still costing us today, despite the advances made on many fronts of science and medicine, political activism, social change, paradigm shifts, community outreach, and globally coordinated efforts across countries and cultures. We have many to remember, many to thank for bringing us to where we are today. For myself, I remember the wards in the pre-hard era. I was in my late 20s a medical student and resident watching people my age or younger die. There were so many young people with AIDS and related complications at the University Health System, at the University Hospital, that the I.D. Consul Service was overwhelmed, necessitated the creation of an independent HIV ward, and it's still in existence today. In many cities and hospitals throughout the country, those wards are closed, but we keep ours open. It was just as busy then as the other services, and it is busy today, but we branched out beyond HIV. I remember being afraid to treat without closed supervision. I wasn't really afraid of the virus, but at that time we knew how it would spread. But the people that I saw, and I really knew very little then about treating HIV, the people that I saw were wasted and emaciated, very frail and very weak. And they did not look like people who could endure a powerful line of biotics or chemotherapy of any kind without suffering bad adverse events. I hated doing procedures on them or sedating them to send them for scans. I wanted them to just rest and try to get well with the TLC. But plenty of them did endure it all and more. Some did die in the hospitals, but others made it home to die in in safer and more loving surroundings. And plenty of time in there, those first few years, did survive until the advent of the protease inhibitors. And those were game changers for so many. And during this time, a new generation was being born with HIV. And many of those lived through those very rough days until the advent of better therapy later on. But these new drugs were game changers for so many. I remember Jean Smith, who was Ivy faculty, and was my mentor. And she took care of a couple back in 1996. And both men had AIDS, but one was far sicker than the other. He had cytominal virus and he was already blind. And before too long, he died. His partner, 20 years on, is still driving. I saw him this week and you could never tell. You can't look at this guy and tell him he's got HIV or anything else. He had a very rough go early on with the protease inhibitors, but survived. And even though he developed quite a bit of viral resistance, ten years later we had kind of a second wave of drugs, second generation drugs. And so he got rescued again with those. And those are the medicines that are carried through today. And he's never looked back. So why did one die and the other live? I can't begin to scratch the surface on that one. A colleague at work shared from a book the complexities and simplicities of survival. In order to truly survive and thrive as this man has, one needs far more than wealth or fame or access or possessions or power. These things can all be stripped from us in an instant. One's life must have meaning. One must have a purpose, even if it's only to stay alive and carry the story of a loved one lost. I remember patients and friends that I was certain would live only to watch them succumb to something unanticipated or something that I missed. And others that I encouraged to enter hospitals who fought back or had a partner fight for them. And they are alive today proving me wrong. I remember these things and learn from them. I'm a better listener now than I was 20 years ago. But there's always room for improvement. I get tired and cranky and I'm difficult to work with. A lot of my coworkers are here to validate that. The patients who are physically healthy but heartbroken and despondent have become the hardest ones to care for. And still today, my sickest patients continue to live because their lives have me. We live. So we here in San Antonio go on living with HIV all around us. And many have lived to realize that there are far worse things than HIV. Those who are infected have learned far more about HIV than simply had a control of uranium with daily medicines. They understand that this is a virus and it's nothing more than that. It's just a virus. They don't give it life and allow it to become anything more than that. HIV does not refine them. And it may be a little more than the reason that they have to take a daily pill. They deny this virus any hospitable lodging. They maintain dominion. The meaning of one's life cannot be diminished by a virus. We hope. Lastly, we hope. We are living lives full of meaning and we have no choice but to live. And there is good reason to hope. We know people identified and treated early who can maintain viral suppression will live a normal or near normal lifespan. And the risk of HIV transmission falls with treatment if you control uranium. We know that if we test aggressively and there are agencies in this room that are testing aggressively. If we test aggressively and link people to care and get the virus suppressed that the incidence of new infections in these populations will fall dramatically. We call this treatment as prevention. It's a mode of treatment. We know that prep or pre-exposure prophylaxis works if the pills are taken daily as part of a comprehensive risk reduction program. And we understand that this pill does not make excuse me, bottom, condoms obsolete. It doesn't make abstinence, obviously. This week, the NIH announced HBTN 702, a vaccine trial to be conducted in South Africa, a country where 1,000 people a day are infected. The antibody-mediated prevention trial, or AMP, is another NIH trial that's exploiting neutralizing antibodies to give an IV in an attempt to suppress the viral response and boost the human immune response. For pregnant women in Sub-Saharan Africa, there's the PROMIS study, promoting maternal and infant survival everywhere. In this trial, mothers with HIV will receive antiretrovirals for the duration of the pregnancy, and then after the child is born, I think there's about 18 million people on medicines, and we need to get that number up. We need to get everybody infected to medical therapy, so they're still struggling there, and women have a tougher time as they go many parts of the world. But once the child is born, if the mother comes off medicines or has interrupted therapy, there's the risk that breast milk is going to infect the baby. And so the mothers are forced to choose between breastfeeding their babies or feeding their babies formula that's reconstituted with whatever water is available. And those are the babies that die more quickly. Those babies get infected with diarrheal illnesses and are survived by the breastfed babies. Even if the breastfed babies become infected, they're the little survivors. So treating moms, suppressing viral load, getting viral load out of breast milk is going to be protecting those babies and watching them grow up. We know that access to medicine and clean water are both basic human rights. Basic human rights. There are trials with implantable or long-acute injectable HMD medicines for prophylaxis as well. So there's many of the things that are going on globally. We have a very... I think we have a very strong community here in San Antonio. A lot of agencies competing and collaborating and serving the same population of patients very, very aggressively. There are many other fronts in which we need to advance the science, activism, funding, and awareness. And it really doesn't matter who's in office. This is always tough. And that is never going to change. We must continue to battle stigma, prejudice, and discrimination vigorously. This is something we will continue to fight about. We must commit to continued efforts to increase awareness, education, testing, linkage to care, and continuance in care to suppress HIV on all fronts. And our clinic can't do it alone. And, you know, now we got some competition, and that's a good, good thing. We need to have choices for patients. We need to increase access and meet the needs. There are many more organizations represented here tonight. Talk to them, reach out, engage, learn, teach, volunteer, advocate, donate. And above all, keep living lives for the meaning. The suffering of the world. See? Talk to service. That's not the deal you're both just talking about. So I'm going to invite you each to take a piece of paper, and there are pens in this basket as it's going around. And reflect about a gift that you have to give. What do you say, what do you have? Right, what do you have to give? Well, what do you really need? Your job? What is something you have? Dr. Bullock talked about living a life of meaning that can enhance the lives of others, especially in our NHS, that will go to a community for a lot. So somebody made cupcakes, and somebody made birthday cakes, somebody in the world, they always have to put ingredients together and bring them to people. I can tell you, that's a gift. I don't invite other people, so they don't have to come along with someone. So you've got hospitality, or you've got some kind of personal magnetism, you've got charisma. That's a gift you've got to give. Some people are really artistic. They can make signs, they can make lanterns, they can sew things, and they can dance or sing. Maybe that's your gift. But all those gifts we need, because a person with HIV is a person full of gifts, more than virus, full of gifts, more than... And we can only overcome that dis-eat by having new relationships, having right relationships with ourselves. And the way you get a right relationship is to love yourself and to know what your gifts are, and to offer them. These gifts are given to us not to have. It isn't about what you have. I have this many degrees. Oh, I have that many cars. You don't go anywhere, or you don't use what you know to educate others, that it is ruthless. So think about a gift you have. Write it on that paper, and then we're going to ask you to come forward and offer it to that bowl of water that stands. What we nourish ourselves with is water. There's a person on this campus who finds HIV activism near and dear to their heart, and so they decorated a tree out there in the courtyard every year for the last 16 or 17 years. And so we're going to water that tree specifically with the water that we have there. But we're going to put our gifts in first. So it's really packed with miracle flowers. That's what we really need. When someone is sick, they need the extra dose to overcome feeling low and feeling down. And that's what's really important of my sharing of gifts. Suffering something with your heart, or your head, or your hands. Six things that make them sensible. Okay, I wanted there to be a kind of way to be able to walk to the other side without stepping on it. As you feel ready, you've already written it. You can turn your pen up here and put your gift in. I'm just going to call whatever gift is as much as you want to say it is. We have to share your gifts. With my head, my heart, and my heart. With my head, my heart. With my hands, and with my sweat. I'm the gift of this world. Of this world. With my head, I can feel the epic love of life. I feel with love and true compassion. I can ease the suffering of this world. With my hands, I can ease the suffering of this world. With my hands, I can ease the suffering of this world. With my head, my heart. Thank you. I invite you to follow them to the mall. Can I step in? I'm sorry. Apologize. Let's go to the plants. That's the inside of you. That's the main thing. We are a group of girls. That was great. We are a way for you to get down to your feet. Got a window. We are a group of girls. As we consider the gifts that we have throughout the year, one of the secret stories is that when our passion is to write and fill and paint and to steal stuff, it is mainly our passion that drives into our culture. You can remember one thing about how you can help others when you learn to read our services. Remember that our services reach farther than the object. They are bigger than our focus. They are larger than our target population. We are going to meet every girl all over the country. If we have not repaid them to go to jail, if we have not shared our gifts, our talent, and our treasure, we have failed to meet them. We, what our creators have passed on, come to us and tell us what we've come to. Despite the tragedies that we're making during this never-ending. We know all of them, also there are days that we may forget the fact that the truth remains to be found. God is everything that we share along the street. He possesses hope, love, and freedom that we share. We get back to the passion and the passion of the patient for a lot of things. We're living with water. We can't tell whose hope, whose compassion is it because it belongs to all of us and we're living it as it is to the universe. So as you feel calm, come forward and splash the water for this treaty to live because what we need to grow on this planet, every living thing is fresh air, water, and light. So here we have all the ingredients that we assembled in this workbook of activities we sewed together tonight. And so we're going to be singing about carrying your candle. So we ask you to water the tree and then carry your candle around and make this ribbon stronger. It's only a single strap right now. Set the candle down towards the end of the song somewhere to make this expand. Somewhere to grow and nurture from each other out to the other. Thank you for being here tonight for your attention today. And sing along as soon as you catch up because I really think it's fun. One, two, three. Set the candle down. So Richie, I want to thank you again for being here and for helping us to remember those who have died. Those who have lost their lives.