it's. this. is getting back i was. trying to. just. haven't done. and i think until you know even in our medical school curriculum you know. when to we talk about hiv you know important it is going to go into the next generation. is not just ignorance and stigma associated with the disease but in lack of compassionate care. by nineteen ninety five h.i.v. infections among black americans had surpassed white america.

blacks accounted for forty percent of all newly infected h.i.v. cases. the most startling discovery was to learn that african-american women accounted for a greater proportion of new aids cases among african-americans overall in two thousand and three. it rose to become the number one cause of death for black women ages twenty five to thirty four and persis this day. after ten years of marriage. my husband and three year old daughter being just twenty nine discovered that i too had a little my third child was born very sick. we didn't know what was wrong with her . no one was able to tell us what was wrong he was in and out of dol spittle and by

the time she was about to my husband began to get sick my husband then wasn't feeling well he had a cough we kept going to different doctors they kept misdiagnosing him first they said he had allergies they gave him allergy shots and then they said he had tb they tested him and he's fine it doesn't have to be after about a full year of trying to figure out what was wrong they then said ok your blood count is really low he went into the emergency room and they said well you probably have a bleeding ulcer so let's admit you to the hospital and let's check you for you know where that is and we can take care of it they kept misdiagnosing him because he was a family man he was married we owned a home we had children in private school so we didn't fit that stereotype of what people with aids or

a trophy look like people have histories people have done things in their lives. but he had been clean for over ten areas so you know they didn't see any marks they didn't see anything that they thought was suspicious i guess the assumption and seldom ever asked him so what happened is that people's perception of who got a scot in that way. so by the time they figured it all out he did not have a bleeding ulcer and they then said ok we need to ask you some of the questions you know have you ever done drugs and those type of questions and then he said yes several years ago when i was in the service and they tested him and he came back with full blown aids. so even while my husband was dying in the hospital you know i made up my. like many of us that you know i

made up stories of what he had i been one telling the truth. because of discrimination because of fear because of that i don't want to people to be afraid of me he die on january first new year's day of course it all made sense then what was wrong with the baby and then she died. on in june of that year. i tested myself and my two other children thank god they were healthy and they did not have to biarritz but idea when i was diagnosed i was very sick i was ab pounds i had no t. cells and i was extremely ill so i was diagnosed with aids

diagnosis not an a.t.v. diagnosis i was given less than two years to live in the course of six brief months lost her husband of ten years first three year old baby girl and was herself diagnosed with aids. when she reached out to her family i'm blessed that i have a family that i do we don't talk about it but i've never felt like they were afraid to be around me for many of those newly infected with hiv and aids silent except in spite family and friends is often not enough after everything happened i went to one support group then it was all guys they were nice men. and i was the only woman. problem with that was many of those guys were talking about things like how do i tell my parents or my family that i am homosexuals and now they were

those were dear conversations and their fears and their discussions of course when i brought up i am in panic i just lost my husband my baby i have an eight in a four year old i'm going to die soon what do i do with my kids i have to stop working i'm now on disability i went from two incomes to a fixed income a disability check i'm trying to figure it all out so of course i think i'm going to die because that's what i was told and for women for mothers our our focus now becomes not even about herself. it's about our children what's going to happen to our children my children are going to be orphans i can't even stand to be in the house with them and watch them playing because i was so heartbroken that i'm going to be leaving and i couldn't identify with the guys in the group so i figure i need to talk to some women and see in my only one that still are with this

or or or what recognizing that her doctor was seeing other female patients you had h i. came up with an idea i asked my doctor if i could put a flyer in our home in her office. some of the women so long the whole a flyer in her office i put a secret phone line in my home because lots of family and friends didn't know i was the along with this issue and lo and behold the phone started ringing and i started we started talking to each other just on the phone none of us wanting to show our faces and as we became more comfortable i would meet them in a coffee shop we started giving each other support that way and then started to support in my home where women will come together bring their children and. talk cry prepared for death and all of those things they were doing very much a. women's group soon revealed. concerns.

from a support group we quickly quickly realize that services for women wore nonexistent if moms need to get to the doctor she was given a token to get on the bus to the doctor. she was given enough tokens to take the children to the doctor with her so basically she had no childcare she had no transportation so she couldn't go to the doctors she ended up not seeing about her so we became a network of women and we shared our our very limited resources we shared our trends. patiently help each other try to doctors appointments i end up keeping lots of children in my home. they don't get put into the foster care system so i would say driving children to all different schools all over

they see in maryland including in addition to mine so they don't get put into foster care system. that's reluctant a handful of shy women soon blossomed into a forceful group of brave souls. no longer able to accommodate the growing number of each i.v. paused of women in her home. wrote a grant got funding and started the women's collective in washington d.c. . women are caregivers we are taking care of not only our children. parents. and now we have. our own health and. to take care of everybody. and i think we need to set up a system that is. helpful. and support women around the support systems. to help them to be able to take care of themselves.

to better understand. there are still so persistent in the black community we checked in with you. straight after all it is they who will determine the

face of the disease in the years to come.

i'm here with some investors from england. i'm here to show your client morsel by poverty hysteria and you know george bush. no sixty seven ok so the state solution. starts here so beautiful little assault.

i think education is definitely one of the more important pieces to it because people are getting the wrong information and they're spreading this wrong information out there we learned about the technical aspect how do you catch it what it is what it stands for right not like percentages and things like that and who are mainly affected my. yeah just like general education knowing that stuff like when i took such that in school you never really learned about a child being late we just learned late about puberty and about how to put

a condom on but they don't really teach you stuff like hiv prevention and who falls into that category of who has it we're minimum incense and we're going to show you are like me having sex they don't shoot at all here you know it's very important to know about going to times about a man and woman having sex and the risk of what happens whenever a few minor femur are male male be to broaden it a little bit larger so we know you know we need we need to be straight you need to be gay but we need to know information is encouraged i think it's also important that parents talk more with their children about it we don't talk a lot about that with us kids even today it's still kind of hard to broach that subject with the young people but it is so important. i'm a famous letters like you do in the back you will get a true she's leaving it all the time to do mom i'm a burden turned to look at rugby i did that doing the right you going to get a model i'm pretty sure that's not cancer that's how you catch it ok it's so she

found out how to really get it she was like a lot that was a game as disease i thought they were given to us and i thought that's how you get it just from doing that by doing that they might notice and i get put i find it funny how when parents automatically assume that your child is going to be shared i mean and they kind of force feed to it that is why a lot of conversation. oh it is i mean needs don't really it doesn't really happen in the household because you're taught. you're kind of taught by your parents to be sure and you know to talk about anything that involves your sex life because you're not street is kind of only you know taboo to bring into your house and say good i'm not going to talk about you know the things that i can get you know by having sex because my mom doesn't want to hear about me having sex with another guy and for me is it's not even about just having sex with the same sex or opposite sex it's not having sex at all so it doesn't get beyond it's just don't have sex and i'm not

even windsor you get married type stuff just on sex and you know procreation what if i'm thinking about it like you know i'm interested and don't i can talk with my parents about it or i don't feel like i can talk to them about that because they already say what they expected as soon as six so i'm like ok if i do have sex what will happen i lack your pride but what about this on my kids. i don't know what they are i'm young i don't know an week this little h.i.v. we don't need to get to that because it's a don't have that i think many more open dialogue about it people are still very very nervous about talking about their sexual health and their sexual behavior talking about sex and it's pretty normal when my group of friends but when they come so mike has to be an online education step s.t.'s on it. that's not their home when there's really awkward but we do talk about it it's not like it's not existed but usually when i hear other people so when i'm out issues in life all some i

guess unattractive or ugly will face on their person not their sauce or. all this other stuff so it's usually in a negative not inspiring or educational light but with my personal friends my close friends issues are like look we be educating people or we're just talking about trying to figure out well what we know or was truest man something to say after a child be on my place and all the blame on the other person all of the blame will myself and both of those are really unhealthy and can like f. up and i say a. good. deal where if people manage to stop. with the abundance of information now available about h i v. number noses up the statistics they believe that as with vitamins all they have to do is pop a pill if they should become hiv positive. community like we do desensitize ourselves so much from aids i mean people as i always

a mental disease if you can manage it you've got to have deep pockets that manage it i mean if you don't have insurance because i don't think the average person can pay fifteen thousand nine hundred dollars in rent and still pay two hundred dollars a month for medication and for those for whom money is not a concern there is a physical cost to taking drugs to fight hiv take four pills i take one pill i think a bactrim pill because to keep infections and stuff away and then i take superior model rocketry which is helps with the pain in the morning. and so i take that as this clock in the morning i wake up started to take medication because. i did two hours to recover from second the medication and i had to go to bed i have my pill container and i'm out of water in the mornings when i wake up i just open the bottle take the pills drink the water may back down let the side effects go through this. stomach pain tiredness everything that i go through just let it all go

through enough to two hours i'm good. the data is that. even well treated even with the best drugs someone with aids is going to live a shorter life than someone doesn't have aids and i you know i have a lot of friends on these drugs at this point both in africa and here and you know if they could go back and change that and live a life free of a trivium i know for sure for certain that they would with thirteen percent of the population yet we have the highest rate of infection again it goes into not a single answer. if i look at how blood pressure what we've i looked at colon cancer where will we be if i look at breast cancer where will we be if i look at. it to one it is clear that the tremendous growth of hiv and aids in america's black

community is driven by many factors yet no matter whom we spoke to physicians clergy political leaders and those afflicted with the virus it was clear that the real culprits behind the epidemic are ignorance miscommunication and most importantly a collective silence about how it is transmitted what it means to live with hiv and its phenomenal spread across black america. if we sincerely want to help the spread of this virus this is support problem that frankly is substantially preventable if there were really good public health campaigns if people were really focused on this problem you certainly should be able to have a lot less h i feel a lot less human suffering and you would and that would mean a lot less energy and resources both in better societal level but also personally trying to deal with it down the why when someone started sick and i was in london in the mid 1980's and you couldn't turn on the television without seeing the

commercial about age having a child be a child be you know can protect yourself get tested etc you know day after day after day after day after day after day after day. that's a public health education in my view that we have not hand at a level of intensity from the public out there do cation. still don't have the bill we are still talking about any increase in the number of cases and we need to talk more to people who other people trust in the communities like for example the hair salon the barber shop we go there all the time we have conversations in there about everything you know so you know getting the right information into places like that places of worship getting the correct information that's a beer can can really help kind of hope this disease if they do think that you can more conversations better you don't necessarily need leadership from the church but

you really need is leadership from somebody right so well that happen to have been the case in the community that there was there was a very fierce playwright larry kramer was a real leader in this conversation and then in zimbabwe and in uganda in congo there were singers who are leaders in this conversations and in other places or political leaders people who didn't maybe could be almost anybody can write maybe somebody has to stand up and take this on it doesn't matter who it is it's just long as one person carries in his her system. kelly and i think what's going to eventually happen as far as in our community is that we need to start letting young people and even young people just people in general understand the power of their voice because eventually was going to happen is that. the new media is going to be the cell phone ok because as they see things put the video you know because now cell phones you could upload photos directly to youtube all these different things is that now they have the power to tell the story. as more people living with

hiv step forward to tell their stories we will no longer be able to ignore them and pretend we are safe the conversation must be taken to the schools inside the homes and throughout the community to eradicate the myths and fears that feed this preventable disease. today african-americans account for fifty percent of all new h i.v. infections every year unless we start talking to each other we will become dependent on drugs to live. with succeeding generations. start the conversation.

on the elevated to the list you don't see. this. but the. data. is that. this was. a child. let's just don't seem to sense the united states staged crisis just to set up the suspension system. for you and me. why would she. be how did you do to us before what is the most pressing hokiness underground labs beneath the radios

would you fall for. one of the africa. conflicts with biology and other mythology districts knowledge. their souls with no thesis how does travel across borders lead all to look for waters. if you just want. to sit next to see an old plane to can identify with the life just business d.c. studios and you know begin. to kill this disease and it's significantly prevented from being ignoring the fuel when we have a little. different but we suffer the same she. sees you are just the name of the gays the most dems you.

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