Knowledge prevents AIDS.
With that in mind, local clergy, public leaders and AIDS researchers are teaming up to spread knowledge about the disease and the virus that causes it.
“[We are] testing, encouraging people to be tested in the community and spreading a message of hope that you can live with HIV,” said Derek Spencer, program manager with the Jacques Initiative. “Unfortunately a lot of people have 1980s information. … Back then it was a death sentence.”
The Jacques Initiative ? a community support and treatment program run by the Institute for Human Virology ? held an open house Wednesday in honor of National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.
The Rev. Karen Bethea, of Set the Captives Free Outreach in Woodlawn, got publicly tested as news cameras rolled. A worker with Sisters Together and Reaching swabbed her upper and lower gums with an Oral Quick test, which provides results in 20 minutes and is 99 percent accurate. “If I stood up and encouraged people to take the test, that would have been fine. But I got up in front of them and showed them,” Bethea said.
She first got the test while at the pulpit several weeks ago. That day, some 150 parishioners signed up for testing out of their 2,000-member congregation. The STARS van returned two consecutive Sundays to test everyone who wanted got tested. Others like the Rev. John Schmidt, of Central Presbyterian Church in Stevenson, said living in the suburbs might make it more difficult to face up to getting an HIV test, Schmidt said. “Who knows how significant that message may be in our area?”
Despite the gains in AIDS treatment, fear of a positive test result still keeps up to 30 percent of those who get tested from ever returning to get the results, Spencer said.
