tv Documentary RT February 28, 2013 6:30pm-7:00pm EST
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incredible day there and the record snowfall throughout what's it been like nobody's allowed to be driving license of emergency vehicles. many in the black community have long memories and today have a clear distrust for government run health agencies part of what drives you know community to his or his torkel perspective is disenfranchisement. is very very much aware and in our communities we still have many communities are talking about this is a conspiracy. to kill. people who sent
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people who like to say. that the government would make an effort to destroy people but black people have had a history. of syphilis experience that was carried on by the federal government for thirty years one thousand nine hundred to one thousand nine hundred seventy two and people said at that time this is a way to get rid of the black population so that's horrible to have to think about . and that kind of planning that we have an entire museum in washington do see the holocaust memorial museum which rag maintain is the most important thing. in the united states that everybody should go to that museum because it's not just about the death. six million people. it's about a government of intelligent people deciding to get rid of
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a population. they thought was a country a minute. they say adolf hitler use the term tear mench in germany. animal people. spoke about the soo much interviewer three. so old people don't think conspiracy theories conspiracy of that set up a conspiracy is when one segment makes a play and against the interests of another segment and the other segment doesn't know anything about it. and when it comes to matters of mental health and therapy. not guy. was. half.
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the time it's. this. is going to back you. was off. the track. was just. not been done. and i think until you know even in the medical school curriculum you know. when to talk about hiv you know important it is going to go into the next generation. is not just ignorance and stigma associated with a disease but a lack of compassion and. by nineteen ninety five h.i.b. infections among black americans had surpassed white america. blacks accounted for forty percent of all newly infected h.i.v.
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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 from now. my husband and three year old daughter and beatrice twenty nine discovered to have. 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 she was in and out of dol spittal and by the time she was about to my husband began to
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get sick my husband 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 then they said he had tb they tested him he's fine it doesn't have to be after about a full year of trying to figure out what was wrong and they then said ok your blood count is really 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 h.i.v. look like people have histories people have done things in their lives.
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but he had been clean for over ten areas so they didn't see any marks they didn't see anything that they thought was suspicious i guess that's the assumption and seldom ever asked him so what happened is that people's perception of scott 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. fell even while my husband was sick and dying in a huff but all the and i made up i did like many of us that you know i made up stories of what he had been one telling the truth. because of discrimination
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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 into it of that year. i tested myself and my two other children thank god they were healthy and they did not have the virus but i did 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 having a child be
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a 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 the 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 homosexual and now they were
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those were dear conversations and their fears and their discussions of course when i brought up i am in a 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 could identify with the guys in the group so i figure i need to talk to some women and see if my only one with this or or. recognizing that her doctor was seeing other female patients. came up with an
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idea i asked my doctor if i could put a flyer in a home in her office. some of the women. the whole flyer in her office i put a secret phone line in my home because lots of family and friends didn't know i was dealing with this issue and started ringing and i started we started talking to each other just on the phone none of us wanted 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 in my home where women will come together bring their children and. talk rye prepared for death and all of those things they were doing pretty much a. women's group soon revealed. concerns. from a support group who quickly realized that services for women were non-existent if
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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 seeing a doctor became a network of women and we shared our our very limited resources we shared our trends. driving children. including.
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your system. full of shy women. brave soul. number of. women in her home. in washington d.c. . we are taking care of children. parents. and now we have. our own. to take care of everybody. and i think. that is. helpful. and support women around the support system. to help them to be able to take care of themselves.
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market. find out what's really happening to the global economy. the global financial headlines kaiser reports. to get. technology innovation the list of. russia. the future. i think education is definitely one of the more important pieces to it because people are getting the wrong information and they're spraying this wrong information out there and we learn about the technical aspect how do you catch it what it is what it stands for why 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 we never really learned
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about each ideally 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 great men having sex they don't shoot at all here you know it's very important to know about going to times about man and woman having sex and the risk of what happens but never a female on a femur a male male be to broaden it a little bit larger so we know you know we need we need we need to be straight you need to be gay but we need to know information isn't there 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. my mother was famous for this land you do it in the back you will get a clue to say it all the time who's new mom i'm
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a virgin turned to look around you know your man doing the right you going to get. mugged and 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 i do have a slight nose and i get it 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 you and you know to talk about anything that involves your sex life because you're not sure it is kind of only you know taboo to bring into your house and say good i'm not going to talk about you know 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
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it's not having sex at all so it doesn't get beyond if you 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 you know i'm interested i don't i can't 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 expect as soon as six so i'm like ok if i do have sex what will happen i lack get pregnant well what about this and my kids. i don't know what they are i'm young i don't know an week slowmo 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 is pretty normal with my group of friends but when they console like a child b. and like educations that s.t.'s on it. that's not their homework and it's really
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awkward but we do talk about it it's not like it's not existed but usually when i hit other people so when i'm out issues you like all so my best 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 like oh my personal friends my close friends issues are like look we be educating people or we're just talking about trying to figure out what what we know or was truest man supposed to say i'm a child be on my place and all the blame on the press all of the blame will myself and both of those are really unhealthy and can like f. up and i see a world. where if the 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
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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 take a bactrim pill because the keep infections and stuff away and then i take. the opportunity which is helps with the pain in the morning. and so i take that as six o'clock in the morning i wake up thirty to take medication because. i did recover from second the medication and i 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 that the side effects go through this. stomach pain
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tiredness everything that i go through just let it all go through or not that's why our good. 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 and 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
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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 a 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 a trophy a lot less human suffering and you would and that would mean a lot less energy and resources both in that a societal level but also personally trying to deal with it down the why would
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someone thirty seconds i was in london in the mid 1980's and you couldn't turn off the television without seeing the commercial about age having a child be a child be you know can protect yourself be attested etc you know day after day after day after day after day after day after day. that's public health education in my view that we have not hand at a level of intensity and 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 so we go there all the time we have conversations in there about everything you know so you know getting the right information it's in places like that places of worship getting the correct information that's a beer can can really help kind of hope this disease do you think. more
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conversations better you don't necessarily need leadership from the church to push you really need is leadership from somebody right so well that happen to have been the case and he came to that was there in the can verify as quite right larry kramer was a real leader in this conversation and in some form of way and in uganda in congo there were singers who are leaders in this conversations and in other places or political leaders 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 as long as i don't personally care as an as 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
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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 generation. start the conversation.
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in the elevated to the school don't seem. to see how cities. use it. but the words. dad. used to see. just like the thirteen colonies. still exist. inside still useless blasts don't seem to sense the united states station crisis fifty percent of patients just. where you live and me. why would she. did h.i.v.
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how did you do to be noticed since before the shooting in the us press in the cleanest underground labs beneath the radios would you fall from. one of the african monkeys theory conflicts with my knowledge see another dose of mythology districts knowledge and if so with no fisa how to travel across borders probably know how to look across borders if you just want. to sit you never see no plane to can identify with the life he's business disease steals in the event of being in. the killed this disease and significantly prevent from being ignorant you can feel the ambivalent not bulis may be different but we suffer the same she. sees you are just a name of the gays most don't see.
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