Activists are using World AIDS Day on Tuesday to regroup and intensify efforts to draw attention to the need for HIV/AIDS testing and proper treatment for a disease that continues to ravage the African-American community.

“World AIDS Day is a powerful reminder that the fight against HIV is far from over, here in the United States and around the world," said Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "Every nine and a half minutes, someone in the United States is newly infected with HIV – that’s someone’s brother, mother, sister, father or neighbor.”

“The burden of HIV in African-American communities is particularly staggering,” Fenton said in a statement to BlackAmericaWeb.com. “The harsh reality is that one in 16 black men will be diagnosed with HIV during their lifetime, as will one in 30 black women. And although available treatments have dramatically increased the life expectancy of people with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, it remains a leading killer of black men and women in the prime of their lives. Today, AIDS is the leading cause of death for black women ages 25-34 and the second leading cause of death for black men ages 35-44. We cannot allow this crisis to continue.”

In Washington, D.C., where HIV/AIDS has reached epidemic proportions, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) will kick off “Save D.C. Needle Exchange Day” to emphasize the need to defeat needle exchange ban legislation pending in the U.S. Senate.

Norton has scheduled a news conference at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at the House Triangle, at Independence and New Jersey avenues in Southeast Washington (Rain location: U.S. Capitol Building, room HC-6).
 
“I applaud our residents, who have decided to put World AIDS Day to good use by coming to the Hill to tell Congress that they will not be turned back to the bad old days of the needle exchange ban, which sent our HIV/AIDS rate to the highest in the nation,” Norton said in a statement.
 
The city’s HIV/AIDS office reported in March that at least 3 percent of District residents have HIV or AIDS, exceeding the 1 percent threshold for an epidemic. The report said 15,120 residents were infected – 2,984 residents per every 100,000 over the age of 12. Overall, more than 4 percent of black residents have the virus. Black men are the most heavily affected, with an infection rate of 6.5 percent.

“D.C. is sitting at the epicenter of HIV/AIDS in America,” Norton said. “Yet, some of my Republican colleagues are seeking to ban needle exchange again by restricting most of the city from operation of the program. The residents, who have approached me, say that they deeply resent imposing non-scientific ideological restrictions from Congress, which knows well the role the congressional ban has played in D.C.’s high HIV/AIDS rate and the harm it has done.”

The White House released an updated video of President Obama when he, then a U.S. senator from Illinois, and his wife, Michelle, traveled to Kenya in 2006 and were tested publicly in front of a mobile health trailer to encourage HIV/AIDS testing.

“If you know your status, then you can prevent illness. You can prevent passing it to your children and to your family, and everyone can have happier, healthier lives,” Obama said at the time.

In the updated message, taped at the White House, Obama told viewers, “HIV/AIDS makes no distinctions and knows no borders. The message I gave to the people of Kenya three years ago rings just as true for us here in the .....

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