World AIDS Day events on campus include HIV education, testing

By Joe Preiner

Monday, December 1, 2008

World AIDS Day, observed globally every year on Dec. 1, is a worldwide event that celebrates the many lives that have been saved by HIV prevention and treatment.

The day will be observed on campus Monday from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on the fourth floor of the Kansas Union. Student Health Services, the Douglas County AIDS Project and the LGBT Resource Center are sponsoring this year’s event.

Ken Sarber, health educator for Student Health Services, said the three groups involved with World AIDS Day at the University will be providing HIV education as well as testing services. He said free oral testing would be provided at the event.

Stacey Burton, education outreach coordinator for DCAP, said the prevalence of AIDS in Kansas was relatively low, with about 3,000 cases reported to date. She said, however, that Kansas fell well below the national testing average for the disease. Burton said the statistic was troubling because the majority of new AIDS cases, anywhere from 50 percent to 70 percent, came from people who were unaware they were infected.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there are about 33 million people living with HIV globally, and about one in every five people were unaware of their infection. Elena Ivanov, executive director of DCAP, said AIDS was a disease that touched more lives than people realized.

“People think the disease is something that happens to others and not to them,” Ivanov said. “They don’t realize that when one person is infected, all are affected.”

Ivanov said one of the best ways to avoid the HIV virus was to get tested regularly, although less than 40 percent of people 18 years old and older had ever been tested. The lack of testing has contributed to about 56,300 new infections each year, the CDC estimates. Ivanov said that although the HIV virus is relatively new and was unknown just 27 years ago, it has already caused an estimated 25 million deaths worldwide.

Burton said many misconceptions about HIV contributed to the continued rise of the disease. She said having sex or sharing needles with an infected person were not the only ways to contract the disease and that it could also be transmitted orally. Burton said it was important for people to take an active role in their own AIDS education.

“We need to take a look at what and who we go home with,” Burton said. “Knowing is a huge part of prevention. We need to be safe and we need to be aware.”

Ryan Campbell, Olathe senior and executive director of KU Queers and Allies, said informing people about the realities of the disease was the first step in battling the disease and the misconceptions surrounding it. Campbell said when AIDS came onto the scene in the 1980s it was known as the “gay cancer.” While it mainly affected the gay community back then, Campbell said today’s most affected group was heterosexual women between the ages of 18 and 24. He said getting the truth about the disease into the hands of uninformed people would go a long way in changing the stigma surrounding AIDS.

— — Edited by Rachel Burchfield

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