Magic Johnson: 20th Anniversary Of HIV Announcement

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By: Nsenga Burton

Today marks the 20th anniversary of an announcement that literally rocked the sports community -- the announcement that legendary basketball player Earvin "Magic" Johnson was retiring, having contracted the H.I.V. virus. Little was known about the virus at the time, so much so that Johnson had to be reminded that he had HIV., not full-blown AIDS before making the announcement. On November 7, 1991, the world stopped for a moment when learning that the man with the magic touch and infectious smile was now facing what was believed at the time to have been a certain death.

The announcement came just after Johnson had married his longtime girlfriend Earleatha "Cookie" Kelly in September of that same year. After a routine physical examination, the seemingly invincible point guard tested positive for HIV. CONTINUE....

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Changing Face Of HIV In Black Communities Over 30 Years

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By Dr. Tyeese Gaines Reid

When the first case of AIDS was reported on June 5, 1981, AIDS was described as a disease of white gay men. Among the terms experts considered naming this new disease, GRID -- gay-related immune deficiency -- is commonly recalled. Now, 30 years later, the face of HIV and AIDS very much includes black America -- with men who have sex with men and heterosexual women most affected.

Contrary to early perceptions, black Americans were always significantly affected by the HIV epidemic from the early days. By the end of 1981, almost 20 percent of all reported AIDS cases were among African-Americans who, at the time, only made up 13 percent of the population, according to the CDC.

However, the false perception that the epidemic did not include blacks may have fueled the changing face of HIV. This "white gay man's disease" shifted in 1990, when the number of new HIV diagnoses among black Americans exceeded the number of new diagnoses among whites. This trend continued until the present. CONTINUE....

WORLD AIDS DAY

Every Woman Has the Ability to Stop the HIV/AIDS Epidemic

By: Sheryl Lee Ralph

Throughout history, African American women have taken a stand and conquered the many challenges that have faced our communities. We have joined together and fought whatever obstacles stood in our way. Now that same sisterhood and camaraderie is needed in order to fight against the HIV/AIDS crisis that continues to take the lives of so many of our African American women and girls.

I am taking a stand against HIV/AIDS and using my voice to speak up. We can no longer allow society’s stigmas to keep us quiet. Join me in an effort to educate others about this disease.

We can start by taking care of ourselves first, getting tested, and knowing our status so that we can win the fight against the AIDS epidemic in the African American community.

Not knowing your status, and not discussing the HIV/AIDS epidemic with your partner, family and friends can be a death sentence. African American women make up 12% of the female population in the United States, yet we account for 66% of new HIV infections. And the number of women infected by the disease is on the rise. This is unacceptable!

Every Woman Has the Ability to Stop the HIV/AIDS Epidemic....

HIV/AIDS Rate in Washington D.C. Tops West Africa

By: Jackie Jones

Get tested. Know your status and be tested regularly.

That’s the message health experts in Washington, D.C. want to get across, following a report released in last month that revealed at least 3 percent of the city’s residents have HIV or AIDS, a total that exceeds the 1 percent threshold that constitutes an epidemic.

With 2,984 residents per every 100,000 over the age of 12 - or 15,120, according to the 2008 epidemiology report by the District's HIV/AIDS office – that means the city’s rate of HIV/AIDS infection is higher than West Africa’s.

“We think information is power, and every time we release information, we do capture another level of the population who recognize HIV is important to their lives,” said Shannon Hader, M.D., director of D.C.’s HIV-AIDS Administration.

Hader told BlackAmericaWeb.com all but one of the city’s eight wards saw an increase in the transmission of the AIDS virus, meaning it cuts across all racial, socio-economic and gender orientation groups.

The report, she said, caused many people to ask, “What’s the first step I can do to protect my health and move the health of the city forward?”

Hader said many Americans have relaxed because they either think they are not at risk for the disease or that their health care professionals are routinely testing them for HIV/AIDS. Many doctors think they will catch the patients at greatest risk simply by asking them about their sexual history and activity. An HIV/AIDS screening should be as routine as having one’s blood pressure checked. Sexual history should not matter, she said.

“It doesn’t take a lot of partners to be at risk,” she said. “You could have had only one partner, and you didn’t know his HIV status. This is such a common disease that you can’t categorize risk.”

In the African-American community particularly, many straight black men believe that AIDS is still largely a gay white man’s disease, and while the report said that only three in 10 people surveyed said they used condoms, “anecdotally, I would tell you that the number is lower among African-Americans,” said Regina Newkirk, director of development communications and community relations for the Whitman-Walker Clinic.

HIV/AIDS Rate in Washington D.C. Tops West Africa....

Global AIDS Crisis Overblown? Some Experts Dare to Say It Is

By: Maria Cheng

LONDON - As World AIDS Day is marked on Monday, some experts are growing more outspoken in complaining that AIDS is eating up funding at the expense of more pressing health needs.

They argue that the world has entered a post-AIDS era in which the disease's spread has largely been curbed in much of the world, Africa excepted.

"AIDS is a terrible humanitarian tragedy, but it's just one of many terrible humanitarian tragedies," said Jeremy Shiffman, who studies health spending at Syracuse University.

Roger England of Health Systems Workshop, a think tank based in the Caribbean island of Grenada, goes further. He argues that UNAIDS, the U.N. agency leading the fight against the disease, has outlived its purpose and should be disbanded.

"The global HIV industry is too big and out of control. We have created a monster with too many vested interests and reputations at stake, ... too many relatively well paid HIV staff in affected countries, and too many rock stars with AIDS support as a fashion accessory," he wrote in the British Medical Journal in May.

Paul de Lay, a director at UNAIDS, disagrees. It's valid to question AIDS' place in the world's priorities, he says, but insists the turnaround is very recent and it would be wrong to think the epidemic is under control.

"We have an epidemic that has caused between 55 million and 60 million infections," de Lay said. "To suddenly pull the rug out from underneath that would be disastrous."

Global AIDS Crisis Overblown?....

HIV Tests Not Yet as Routine as They Should Be

By: Lauran Neergaard

WASHINGTON - Two years after the government urged making HIV tests as common as cholesterol checks, there are small gains but still one in five people infected with the AIDS virus doesn't know it, scientists said Thursday.

Eleven states that once required special consent for HIV testing have changed their laws, a key step to making an HIV test part of the standard battery that patients expect.

But HIV specialists meeting Thursday said other barriers include physician confusion about the ease of today's rapid tests, which can cost as little as $15 - although many patients seem to accept them.

No more than 100 of the nation's 5,000 emergency rooms routinely test for HIV in patients who aren't critically ill, said Dr. John Bartlett of Johns Hopkins University, who co-chaired the Forum for Collaborative HIV Research meeting. Yet because so many HIV patients are poor or uninsured, ERs are the health-care setting most likely to find them.

And while every pregnant woman is supposed to be tested so steps can be taken to protect her unborn baby, about 40 percent aren't, he added.

HIV Tests Not Yet as Routine as They Should Be....

COMMENTARY: Black Americans Still Don’t Get the Message About HIV/AIDS

By: Deborah Mathis

Forget the woeful statistics, the sheer redundancy of reporting on HIV/AIDS among black Americans has itself become depressing.

Year after year, there is worsening news. According to the Black AIDS Institute, a Los Angeles-based think tank, it is now so bad that infection rates among blacks in some parts of the country rival those in Uganda and South Africa.

In Africa, the epidemic is being fed by ignorance, misinformation, superstition, cultural restraints and the unavailability – sometimes by government edict – of certain therapies.

It was in Cape Town, South Africa six years ago that I met scores of men, women and babies with the virus. One evening, I accompanied a community counselor to a secret meeting place with a young rape victim whose assailant – a man old enough to be her father – believed that having intercourse with a virgin would cleanse him of the disease.

The girl’s family had banished her from their home in the poverty-stricken Nyanga district once they learned of the attack. She was living with an aunt in Khayelitsha township when I met her. She had the virus and desperately wanted treatment, but the aunt had forbade it, fearing ostracism from her neighbors, should they find out.

COMMENTARY....