MSU plans for the event to include a remembrance vigil for lost loved ones, speakers from ONE Campaign Orlando and VUCF, a screening of Philadelphia, and music and information to bring awareness to UCF students and to provide information about how to help.
"To get involved because of the cause, not
just because it's the popular thing to do, is something that
everyone should do," said Lisette Ortiz, coordinator of World AIDS
Day at UCF. At UCF, one in every four students has an STD and not
even half the students have been tested for HIV, according to Ortiz.
REACH, an organization on the UCF campus, provides anonymous and
confidential HIV testing for $15. There are no needles or blood
necessary for the test and a person is identified by a number, so it
is completely anonymous. REACH also has literature and seminars
about how a person can protect himself from HIV.
One of the biggest challenges is getting people to overlook the stigma that this is a social disease, and realize it's a medical disease, UCF associate professor Sharon Douglass said. Douglass started a class at UCF called HIV Disease: A Human Concern in 1985. The class covers everything surrounding the disease including statistics, prevention, symptoms, management and what it's like to be HIV positive. "The only thing is to educate the younger population not to see it as a moral issue," Douglass said.
Douglass said it is difficult for the younger population to identify with AIDS patients because all they see is older men and women. Florida is ranked third in the nation in total cases of AIDS, according to statistics at www.friendstogether.org. One in every 60 persons in Orlando between the age of 13 and 45 is HIV positive, Douglass said. According to www.friendstogether.org, 400,000 to 500,000 HIV infected persons may be untested, untreated or both.
Douglass said that the only chance to cure
AIDS at this point is to educate the youth on how to prevent the
virus from spreading. There is no medical cure.
Education is a key defense against the virus, according to Cathy
Robinson-Pickett, the cofounder of a Lakeland-based nonprofit
organization called Friends Together. Friends Together is a group
with a mission to serve the physical, emotional and spiritual needs
of people infected and affected with HIV.
"They've finally proven that only three categories of people get
AIDS: men, women and children," she said.
One of the main causes of the spread of HIV is ignorance, Robinson-Pickett said. Friends Together is a support group that helps infected people understand what to do to cope with the stresses the virus puts on their lives. It also helps their friends and family in educating them about what is going to happen and how to cope with that.
The education doesn't stop there.
Robinson-Pickett travels around the country speaking about the
virus. Friends Together takes on hundreds of interns and volunteers,
who are taught about the virus and who in turn spread awareness.
"It takes people like Pickett to inform the public about the
importance of AIDS education and prevention because the government
tends to dance around the subject," said fellow AIDS advocate and
survivor Glen Gary. Gary said that the government is sending mixed
messages to society. It all started as a gay and drug-user virus. As
it evolved, it turned into a black-community virus. Now it is seen
as something that is manageable and that a person infected with HIV
can live a perfectly normal life, which Gary says is just not the
case.
Because of ignorance people infected sometimes lose their apartments, jobs, insurance and friends, he said. "We are the only country in the civilized world that treats this as a 'gay disease'. Europe treated it as a medical problem, and educated the people about how it is actually spread," Gary said.
A person in stage one AIDS could take anywhere from four to five pills twice a day until the virus transforms and that cocktail of medication stops working. Once that cocktail stops working there is a period of trial and error to see what will work next.
The social stigma placed on the virus evolved during the 1980s and hasn't changed much in over 20 years.
Both Gary and Douglas said that any person between the age of 13 and 65 should be tested for the disease. The main piece of advice from every source is when being sexually active, always wear a condom and get tested for HIV as soon as possible.