HIV/AIDS Agency Comes to Tribeca

By Andrea Appleton
POSTED MARCH 2, 2007

When a Japanese immigrant named Yoshi learned he had AIDS more than a decade ago, it was painfully sudden. Without warning he fell violently ill, and spent months in a hospital bed, fighting for his life. As a result, Yoshi (who chose only to give his first name) lost his job as a computer engineer, and spiraled into debt. Lacking good English skills, he didn’t know where to turn. Then a health worker told him about APICHA, the Asian & Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS.

Today Yoshi, a 58-year-old with jet-black hair, chiseled features and a sunny disposition, is hardly the image of a man with a deadly disease. He works full-time at a Buddhist temple in Midtown, and by his own reckoning, is happy, healthy, and solvent. He attributes a good deal of his well-being to APICHA, which moved recently from Soho to its own five-story loft building in Tribeca.

“APICHA helped me when I couldn’t even walk,” he says in halting English. “People here support each other.”

APICHA, one of the largest HIV/AIDS organizations in the country that is dedicated to Asians is still getting settled in their new space, on the edge of Chinatown at 400 Broadway, at Walker Street. Employees bustle through a maze of unpacked boxes in the second- and third-floor offices. Construction is nearly complete on the fourth floor, where the primary care clinic will be. The first floor, most of which will be sublet, is still under construction.

But hanging pictures and unwrapping furniture is secondary to the 200 Asian and Pacific Islander (API) clients living with HIV or AIDS who depend on APICHA. The organization provides a wide range of services, many in 15 different languages, from Thai to Tagalog.

Yoshi, for instance, has a Japanese caseworker, and attends a support group composed of other HIV positive Japanese clients. He uses the clinic, and says APICHA has helped him with financial problems, and with navigating city agencies. But perhaps the most important aid has been intangible. “I don’t need to hide anything here,” he says. “And when I can be open, it makes me more comfortable.”

The organization was formed in 1989 by a group of Japanese American activists who saw the crisis in their own communities. Back then, Asians and Pacific Islanders were statistically marginalized: lumped together with Native Americans as “Other.”

“For a long time, people in both the government and our communities thought that HIV/AIDS did not affect people from Asian communities,” says Ding Pajaron, APICHA’s director of development. “Meanwhile, our friends were getting sick and dying.” Today, more targeted statistics show that while HIV infection is more common among some of the city’s other ethnic groups, the number of new diagnoses is rising only in Asian and Pacific Islander communities. Cultural taboos around sex, gender roles, and medical care make the job of helping more difficult. Just getting people to seek help can be a challenge. “One of APICHA’s missions is to combat stigma,” says Dr. Victor Inada, medical director. “Culturally there’s a lot of hesitancy to get tested. In many Asian communities, they don’t even want to talk about sex, let alone HIV or STDs.” Sometimes, that means approaching the patient indirectly.

“In some cultures, women are not allowed to just receive information,” Pajaron says. “So we have to evolve programs that actually are reaching out to the man. We have to educate the man in order to educate the woman.”

Among Asians and Pacific Islanders, the steepest rise in HIV infection has been among heterosexual women. A common reason, say APICHA caseworkers, is the immigration pattern among families. Married men come to the U.S. first so that they can earn enough money to bring the rest of the family. Often spending years away from their wives, they may engage in risky sex, and then infect their partners when they finally arrive.

Such was the case with “Ronju,” 59, and “Rina,” 50, from Bangladesh, who chose not to give their real names.

Twenty-seven years ago, Ronju worked his way from Bangladesh to New York City on a boat. He jumped ship here and stayed, deciding to separate from his wife Rina.

Nineteen years later, Rina finally immigrated to the U.S. and the couple reunited. In the interim, Ronju had remarried and divorced twice.

He had also contracted HIV, though he did not know it.

By the time he found out, in 2001, he had already given the virus to Rina. Native Bengali-speakers, neither spoke English well, nor knew much about the disease. They say when they tried to get information, health workers would often attempt to speak to them in Spanish.

The couple eventually heard about APICHA from a doctor, but Ronju refused to come. “At first, I said ‘I can deal myself!’” says Ronju, speaking through his Bengali caseworker, Shefali Rowshan.

Rina first came to APICHA alone. It was a relief to speak in her native tongue, and she and Rowshan became close. Rina eventually convinced Ronju to join her.

“At the beginning, I was very upset. Nobody should have this kind of disease,” says Rina. “But now I am doing very well.” While Ronju is on HIV medication, Rina does not yet need it. She speaks effusively about the emotional and mental support APICHA has given her.

“APICHA is like my family,” she says. “I can express myself here.”

Rowshan, who is also from Bangladesh, accompanies the couple to doctor’s appointments, and helps them whenever they need language assistance. Over the years, she has helped the couple with everything from rent problems to family feuds.

“APICHA is like my right hand,” Ronju says now. “This is my home.”

Rowshan says she understands Ronju’s initial reluctance to seek help.

“In our culture,” Rowshan says, “we don’t have the concept of social work. All the counseling is done within the family.”

She says it took more than a year just to get Ronju to speak openly with her.

“At first I would do anything just to build a relationship with him, to sit down with him,” she says. “If he was going to go buy some candy, I’d go with him! And now look. He is doing so well.”

That personal attention extends to prevention, as well.

“APICHA’s a one-stop shop,” says Larry Tantay, an HIV testing counselor. “We’re trying to help with all the different aspects of a person’s sexual health.” APICHA offers free, confidential HIV and syphilis tests to all comers.

They also test throughout the city, at special events, and even in mosques and churches. (To schedule a test, call 1-866-APICHA9.) APICHA also has an outreach program that sends volunteers, armed with brochures and “Safe Sex Kits,” containing condoms and health information, to nightclubs, neighborhood festivals and gay bathhouses around the city. (APICHA welcomes volunteers of all backgrounds. To donate or volunteer, call 1-866-APICHA9.) A peer education program, the Young People’s Project, targets Asian teenagers. They hope to break through some of the barriers and misconceptions about the virus in Asian communities.

“We need to support more information,” says Diana Roygulchareon, coordinator of the Young People’s Project. “We need to have discussions on not just sex, but ideas of innocence and purity, and how our culture affects how we live here.”

For Yoshi’s part, he hopes that his own story will help others take the leap and get tested, and perhaps fear the results a little less.

“When people don’t have knowledge or education, they are only afraid,” he says. “They think only, if I am HIV positive, I’m dying. But that is wrong! You are not alone. We can take hands together, and survive.”

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