You don't hear about the AIDS epidemic as much as you used to. In the 1980s, the discovery that the disease was a real threat to humanity led to alarming headlines around the globe. There was both fear of the unexplainable illness and a stigma toward those most at risk of contracting the disease.
People don't talk about AIDS anymore, and many treat the disease like one that happens to "other" people. But don't be fooled – AIDS has not gone away.
Around the world, there are an estimated 33.2 million people living with HIV, including 2.5 million children. Almost half of those infected with the virus get it before they are 25 and die before they are 35.
It was 20 years ago that the World Health Organization declared Dec. 1 as World AIDS Day. The intention was to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS, and to encourage the development of education and prevention programs. So here we are, two decades later, and although treatment for AIDS has improved, there still are too many patients who don't have access to it – and even worse, there are far too many who have been exposed to it and don't even know it.
In the United States, recently released statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that Latinos are disproportionately affected by the HIV virus. Latinos rank second among ethnic groups most at risk, and although we are 15 percent of the population, we accounted for 19 percent of new AIDS cases diagnosed in 2006.
There are an estimated 200,000 Latinos in the United States living with AIDS and millions more who are indirectly affected by the disease. According to the CDC, AIDS is claiming the lives of Latinos at four times the rate of the general U.S. population.
A few weeks ago during a conference in Los Angeles, public health officials and community leaders discussed the reasons behind the growing number of Latinos affected by AIDS. They attributed the phenomenon to a lack of understanding of the disease and a lack of information about how it can be transmitted.
As a result, Latinos don't get tested as much as other groups. Latinos with AIDS sometimes are infected for up to 10 years before they are tested, so that makes it more likely that they could be spreading the disease without knowing it.
There certainly is a cultural component to this. AIDS is still largely taboo among Latinos. Because it is a disease that is linked to drug use, sex and homosexuality, it is just not talked about in socially conservative Latino families.
For Latinas at risk, the problem is even more serious, since they have to deal with the element of machismo. Many Latina patients have been infected by their husbands, being unaware that they have cheated and picked up the virus on the street. In turn, Latinas who become pregnant not knowing that they are carrying the virus can pass it on to their unborn children. They are unaware that early testing can prevent mother-to-child transmission of the disease.
With the threat of so many deadly diseases out there, AIDS awareness seems to have taken a back seat. We have seen an increase in campaigns to educate people on the threat of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, among others, but AIDS continues to be the unmentionable disease. Yet so many lives could be saved if people realized that taking a test to determine possible exposure to the HIV virus is nothing to be ashamed of. It is, in fact, an act of courage. But risking your life and that of others is not.
Reach Maria Elena Salinas at www.mariaesalinas.com.
