Tuesday, December 9, 2008

HIV/AIDS

I learned many things from Professor Stern's lecture last week about HIV/AIDS in the Latino community that I had not previously known. First of all, there were some very shocking statistics provided; for example, she said that Hispanics/Latinos accounted for 17% of people living with HIV/AIDS in the 33 states studied, that they have the second highest infection rate after African Americans, and that most of the transmission occurs through male-male sexual contact and drug use/injection, which is very shocking to me. 

In addition, Professor Stern discussed one particular case of an individual who had AIDS, and that was Reinaldo Arenas. He had a very interesting life, and lived a life of exile in many ways; he was labeled dissident for opposing the government and declaring that he was gay, and then he was isolated and alienated in NYC for having AIDS. 

HIV/AIDS is still a very prevalent disease in society today, and the United States needs to continue educating the population on the dangers of this disease. I find it shocking that there are people purposely trying to contract HIV/AIDS, when there are so many people who are suffering from the disease. 

Also, I am doing an advocacy project on HIV/AIDS for the final project, and it has been extremely interesting to talk to professionals in the field and find out how they are trying to solve the problem and also figure out what we can do to help. 

2 comments:

jmdailey said...

I agree. The information she provided was very shocking especially in today's society where most people don't think AIDS is still around just because it isn't as big of a problem as it was in the 80's. It is really cool that this happened to be what your advocacy project was on!

natalia said...

I was also really shocked at the statistics that were presented to us in class. I have always been aware that the HIV/AIDS issue was prevalent in the Latino community but I hadn't been aware of how significant that danger was to Latinos. I do agree that there should be more programs to educate the community about this problem that not only the Latino community faces, but the country as a whole.
I was glad to see a lot of activity around campus on AIDS awareness week. A lot of the multicultural sororities and fraternities held informational events like "AIDS in the Black and Brown Community".