My colleague Ruthann Richter has both a professional and personal connection with AIDS: she has been covering AIDS as a medical writer since the early 1980s, and she became close with numerous children and families affected by the epidemic during her multiple visits to Kenya. She first visited the African country with a photographer-friend in 2004; the two co-authored the recently published "Face to Face: Children of the AIDS Crisis in Africa." From the current issue of Palo Alto Weekly:
The book is about children in Kenya and those who give them care. Its photos show kids in tattered clothing living in tin shacks or running around the streets alongside open-sewer trenches. Poorly supplied classrooms, hunger and desperation for survival are narrated in a set of moving stories. But despite the depictions of dire poverty and the grim reality of AIDS, "Face to Face" also manages to convey a sense of beauty, hope and happiness.
Ruthann also wrote about her experiences in sub-Saharan Africa in "The unhealthiest place on the planet for children," a 2006 Stanford Medicine article.
Previously: The girl who would be Queen
Photo by Karen Ande
