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Agencies Promote HIV Testing

June 26, 2009 2:51 PM

ABC News On Campus reporter Xorje Olivares blogs:

   With National HIV Testing Day  on Saturday, many organizations are doing their best to spread the word about spreading HIV, a condition that could potentially destroy the immune system and develop into AIDS.

 Cynthia Washington, the HIV prevention programs coordinator for AIDS Services of Austin (ASA), spends about eight hours a day, six days a week doing just that, assisting the group provide testing, counseling, and behaviorally targeted interventions for at-risk populations.

The agency says that in 2008, it provided services to more than 1,400 people, and reached nearly 9,000 through its prevention programs. About 50 people visit Washington every day, ranging from transients, commercial sex workers, and substance abusers. They are looking for such risk-reduction supplies as condoms that ASA provides to protect them from the condition that the World Heath Organization says has claimed more than 25 million lives worldwide.

 Health services at the University of Texas at Austin has also done its part to inform students. Dozens of pamphlets pertaining to HIV contraction adorn the walls, as does a fishbowl full of free condoms for students to take.

Dr. Kevin Prince, health coordinator for the university, says people, particularly students, must get over a sense of invincibility and take full responsibility for their actions.

“There is this kind of Superman, or Superwoman, that we all want to be,” Prince said. “I say protect yourself so you don’t have that long-term regret that a lot of people sit here in my office and talk about—‘You know, if I had just done this.’—yeah, if you had, it would have been easy to avoid.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that, from 2000 to 2004,  the number of young people contracting HIV increased 42 percent.

According to the CDC, as of 2007, 1,051,875 Americans were living with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, a 15 percent increase from 2004. Men who have sexual relations with men are still at the highest risk for infection, making up more than two-thirds of those infected in 2005, and increasing 26 percent over the next couple of years. As of 2007, the CDC believed that nearly half a million men who engaged in these activities were living with HIV.

Heterosexual men and women have been just as susceptible, with their numbers increasing 9 and 14 percent respectively, due to high-risk sexual activity. Injection drug use has been another cause for infection—the CDC reports that about 300,000 men and women have contracted HIV through needle exchange since the inception of the disease.

The Latino Commission on AIDS recently reported that nearly 200,000 Latinos were living with HIV/AIDS in the U.S., accounting for 19 percent of those infected overall. The CDC believes that more than one in four Latinos is diagnosed late in the course of the infection, sometimes too late for treatment.  In 2005, HIV/AIDS was the fourth-leading cause of death among Latinos. 

Yet, the African-American community is still the hardest hit in terms of diagnoses. In 2005 alone, half of those diagnosed with HIV/AIDS were black. It’s even one of the leading causes of death for that particular demographic, which only comprises 13 percent of the overall population, per the CDC. Poverty and lack of education have both been cited as reasons for the increase in risk.

To promote awareness, particularly to those in the Austin area, ASA holds workshops and intervention sessions, which Washington says attracts dozens of people, most of who come voluntarily. She does, however, acknowledge the difficulties in trying to get most people to attend because of the fact that it is a sensitive topic.

AVERT, an international AIDS charity organization, said that there are 5,068 people living with HIV in the Austin-Round Rock area.

“It depends on what you put on the flyer, you know, to make people want to come,” Washington said. “If you put anything about AIDS, people are probably not going to want to come because no one really wants to talk about that. So, you have to have a strategy to introduce it another way.”

Washington says the programs are designed to persuade people to get tested and to know their status. Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services will provide free testing for the community Saturday. 

Pete Oxner, who works with the department’s HIV prevention program, said that although they have  been working on curbing the number of cases, he has not seen a reduction in new infections in the past five years or so. He said he hopes that people realize that being safe requires effort.

“Well testing does not protect an individual from infection,” Oxner said. “We emphasize that individuals who are engaged in risky behavior to be tested so that they know what their status is, and they can share that with their partners.”

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