Complacency on AIDS Seen as a Main Threat
Sabtu, 04 Juni 2011 by Android Blackberry
4 who are HIV-positive share their tales of caution
Despite newfound optimism with the AIDS epidemic, those affected by the disease say increasing awareness about how HIV is spread remains important.
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| Complacency on AIDS Seen as a Main Threat |
A United Nations report last week showed new HIV infections worldwide dropped almost 20 percent over the last decade. Also, findings that a pharmaceutical on shelves now could prevent new infections amongst gay men was welcome news.
Having said that, a former surgeon general who served during the frenzied early days of the disease's arrival in the United States, described the current lack of public attention as the “new front” within the battle against HIV/AIDS
Speaking at a national summit on HIV earlier this month, Dr. Charles Everett Koop said the nation's growing complacency is as harmful as a number of the irrational fear surrounding the illness in the 1980s.
“HIV is white noise within the background,” said Mark Cohen of Desert Hot Springs. “We've been hearing about it for 25 years, so we stopped listening. What occurs is then folks do not look at it as some thing they are able to deal with.
“Once they locate out they're positive, it's too late.”
To raise awareness on World AIDS Day today, Cohen and other neighborhood residents talked about their own fight with a disease that killed 1.8 million people today in 2009 alone.
A mother cheated
Her doctor told her she had seven or eight years to live, and terror gripped the single mother. Her son, John, was a little boy having a poor heart.
“I prayed a great deal. At times I cried a good deal in my room,” Whitmer, 55, recalled.
“I felt like it shouldn't have happened to me due to the fact I had something I had to do. I had a child to take care of. So I was extremely frustrated with it, with the fact I was positive.”
Mother and son had a morning routine of taking their pills at breakfast. John was her source of strength until he died in 2003 from his heart ailment.
Two years later, she showed up at the actions of the Desert AIDS Project, which provides medical care and support services to people living with HIV and AIDS inside the desert
