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Rachel Jacobson |
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US: Awareness Campaign On HIV/AIDS Begins; U.S. to Spend $45 Million Over 5 Years
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Apr 8th, 2009 - 12:31:15 |
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Awareness Campaign On HIV/AIDS Begins; U.S. to Spend $45 Million Over 5
Years
Wednesday, 08 April, 2009
The Washington Post (U.S.)
The Obama administration began a five-year, $45 million media blitz
yesterday to spark awareness about HIV infection and AIDS, saying that
Americans have grown complacent about the deadly illness even though it
represents "a serious threat to the health of our nation."
The campaign, Act Against AIDS, will include public service announcements,
advertising on trains, buses and other modes of public transportation, text
messages and a Web site, http://NineAndaHalfMinutes.org, a reference to the
frequency with which people are infected.
"There is a complacency . . . a false sense of security and a false sense of
calm," said Kevin Fenton, director of the national center for HIV/AIDS at
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Every 9 1/2 minutes,
someone's mother, someone's daughter, someone's father, someone's friend is
infected."
Fenton said the aim of campaign, at a cost of $9 million a year, "is to put
the HIV epidemic back on the front burner, on the radar screen." But the
program is being criticized as inadequate by a leading HIV/AIDS nonprofit
group.
"There are approximately 1.2 million people in the U.S. living with HIV/AIDS
today. More than 300,000 of these individuals have never had an HIV test and
therefore do not know their HIV status," said Michael Weinstein, president
of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. "A $45 million communications plan, no
matter how well-intended, will do little to help identify those 300,000
infected individuals who may unknowingly be infecting others."
Fenton said the campaign will initially target a group that nonprofit
organizations overlooked for years as the disease spread: African Americans.
Black people make up slightly more than 12 percent of the population, but
they represent nearly half of new HIV infections and nearly half of
Americans living with the disease, according to the CDC. One in 16 black men
will be infected with HIV in his lifetime, along with one in 30 black women.
A separate phase of the awareness campaign will target Latinos, who
represent 15 percent of the country and 17 percent of new infections,
according the CDC statistics. The rate of new infections among Latino men is
double the rate among white men, and the rate among Latino women is four
times that among white women.
Domestic Policy Council Director Melody Barnes said the District is of
particular concern. A recent study by the D.C. HIV/AIDS Administration that
showed 3 percent of District residents have HIV or AIDS.
The rate was 6.5 percent for black men in the District and 2.6 percent for
black women. Fenton said an estimated one in five people who have HIV are
not aware of it.
To help get the message out, the White House and CDC will work with black
interest groups including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 100
Black Men of America and the American Urban Radio Networks.
Twenty-five years ago, skeptics questioned the National Council of Negro
Women's conference on HIV/AIDS. Today, the answer is clear, said Dorothy I.
Height, a civil rights icon and president emeritus of the council.
"Here we are today with African American women being 15 times more likely to
be infected than white women in our country," she said. "We want to be able
to talk about this as we talk about jobs, as we talk about housing, as we
talk about civil rights. We all have a responsibility to break the silence
and speak out about this disease."
--
Rachel M Jacobson
Program Director
Global Youth Coalition on HIV/AIDS
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