Activists say that if health policies were modernized, people like Lamont Valentin, who died earlier this month, could have longer lives. Photo courtesy of ACT UP New York

Lamont Valentin needed an oxygen tank to breathe. Everything he did — whether it was traveling by bus from his home in Harlem to his doctor's office, teaching HIV-positive kids photography at a New York City nonprofit or taking care of his 2-year-old son — the tank accompanied him.

About a year and a half ago, it became clear a lung transplant was Valentin's only hope to breathe easier. And he could have been a good candidate for the procedure — he was young and otherwise healthy. He, his friends and some medical experts believed he would have been able to survive for many more years if he had been given new lungs.

But when he began looking for a transplant, he was denied almost everywhere he turned, supporters said.

Holding him back was the virus he was born with in 1984, HIV. Early in life, before he began using modern antiretroviral drugs, it left him with permanent lung damage.

Despite years of living with HIV, Valentin had virtually undetectable levels of antibodies of the disease in his blood throughout his 29 years.

But his lungs became progressively more inflamed and infected until about two years ago, when he became reliant on the oxygen tank. As his condition deteriorated, so did his outlook on the chances of getting the procedure that would save his life.

"Over the past month I watched his morale begin to decline," his friend Adam Melaney said. "He called me and said, 'I don't understand why no one wants to take care of me.'"

On Dec. 3, while riding a New York City bus back home from a doctor's appointment, Valentin died.

Now activists are hoping to use his story as a way to spark a conversation about the patchwork of policies that influence medical decisions surrounding the medical treatment of HIV-positive people.

The activists say they hope to highlight that while new and better medicine has made procedures like lung transplants — once deemed too risky for people infected with HIV — feasible, the policies that guide doctors' decisions have not caught up.

As more and more HIV-infected people have longer lives, and therefore require more non-HIV-related care, the activists and some experts say adapting medical practice to the new reality is imperative. They say that if the policies were modernized, people like Valentin could live longer.

The circumstances leading up to his death are complex, and most of his friends and supporters don't place blame on any particular doctor.

But they say several prominent hospitals failed to live up to their high standards of care by ruling out a lung transplant for Valentin because of his HIV status. They say that at the very least, hospitals like New York–Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, where Valentin received much of his care, had the responsibility to see if he would have made a good candidate for pulmonary transplantation.

On Wednesday, Valentin's friends will join protesters from the AIDS activism group ACT UP at Rockefeller Center to express their dismay at his treatment, and to remember his life.

His friends say that when he died, he took with him a legacy of inspiration for people born with HIV.