loral. a lot. at the start just strange new disease affecting healthy young americans looks like this a period between the first outbreak of a summer night hundred eighty one and ninety five not only were people coming down with a it's and dying and so forth but nobody knew who had it or who didn't now more than thirty years since its arrival the face of aids looks like this but the social stigma of this disease lingers persons get educated but in the back of their mind h.i.v. may still be a little dirty secret the biggest part of this little secret is its growth across

black america in a.z. is gonna hold in the african-american community it's it's it's this right here is not spreading out that way it's right in the african-american community a collective silence has enabled it to spread across gender and sexual orientation african-americans tend to have sex with african-americans it's black men and black men usually it's black men and black women usually we're spreading death. among ourselves. both black men down women are at much greater risk of getting age i.v. compared to their white counterparts youth as well as adults. we began our investigation by looking at men who account for seventy percent of all new

infections among blacks but what was surprising is that it's not just men who have sex with men who need to be concerned about hiv says. i did everything possible to get in this position you know i wanted that you know the way i did my life was fast and free so i pretty much got what i was looking for if i'm not mistaken alice and p g community clone and i think that's why our verse i first fell on top when they told me i didn't believe yeah because i had all these s.t.d. is like now. it a cool way. you know bad i was my thing in baghdad it overall way but it didn't go away and stanley's response was going now you know oh that doesn't

need as like i want to be on with it you know like ok if i get it i want you how are you know i want to get our. you know i probably did go get had a day you know i would not think about it because i know i know know me so i would get home and. you know you tell me all had i had a long. who want to know who want i would of buying. so many drugs to be to take my calls for me. and i had anemia and at one time i had to get stats like trees have that we. just like. i don't think. that be a neighborhood if you don't wish it was you know everything everything is heavy you know here they say have you very weak and you still got to get to get it out to get these three shots a week yeah honestly i think. i had three blood transfusions

because of it you know. so that out was an experience wolf in this cell and after living with hiv for over thirty years if i tell you my story. is that all of it you got to go through. and that's why. everybody's body is different and you know everybody body is different what i go through you may never go through did it again you might go through it twice is worse so don't look at me and say oh yeah i'm opposed to not opposed to. someone then with h.l.v. . i remember when major magazine said this would never be a heterosexual disease it would always be you know in the in the gay community it would always been the drug community it would now have a spread to they had all sorts of community well that was false but when people

heard that it was all thank god i'm heterosexual i don't have to deal with i have to be worried about this you know this epidemic our investigation reaffirmed that men having sex with men are highly susceptible to contract ing hiv. what we also learned is that straight ahead roe sexual black men are a rising tide in contributing to the growth of this deadly virus take two percent of the population may be african-american but we make up a much larger percentage of the individuals that infected with hiv the any and it is ruin especially among young people young african-american the centers for disease control have presented strong data showing that youth between ages thirteen to twenty nine are an ever growing population falling prey to h i

v. however we learned of a segment of this group that seems to have gone almost unnoticed youth born with this disease i've heard women use the terminology you know he gave this to me when somebody gave you something it's because you accepted i contracted hiv from this man i was in a relationship with him and we had a child i love my daughter he meant three i thank him and for whatever reason that god use him and me as a vehicle to bring this challenge to the world h.i.v.'s here the elephant is in the room is what i'm doing with that elephant i no longer. i have locked myself into this anger you know look what he did to me. when i parents upon thousand entirely positive i was six years old and. it was on

my doctor's appointment and you know how they have a playroom for kids no one waiting for the doctor and i was in the play room whilst playing and they took my mom out the play room so i guess there is hope for her to tell me my doctor came out the room and he came and picked me up from the playroom and when we went into the the room i see my mom and bill of tears so me i'm pulling away from my doctor like mom and still i mean toys equally not i don't know why my mom was crying and she's like most we had just come in and the doctors was like you know your mom want to talk to you so i'm like ok and she just told me she just like blurted out i guess i just passed so like stand up and how she just blurt she's brought it out and so my first question was that always on a diet because i used to hear like a lot of kids in africa dying from a child me an aids so that was my biggest fear that i thought i was going to die they both advance the way that i could understand they you know there's medications

out there that's going to take care of you but you're not this is something that's going that you're going to live with for ever i shared with the school that raising every possible i never expected outcome i never expected teachers would have discriminated against or even i never expected that administrators would not have taken the time to learn and understand how this disease is transmitted so they wouldn't discriminate against it. so when i went to school the next day and i had told my own friend i say you know i went to the doctor and my doctor told me that my mom told me that i had hiv and i soon as i said that my teacher she automatically pulled my friend away from me and put up a glows around the classroom and i'm due to the fact that her knowing that i was a child cry. as if i couldn't go on and crash the poor garbage bags around me like if i had to use the back to use the bathroom or myself choose to take my school lunch away from me or do so factor me being a child be positive she was abused she was abused by i was school system other

children started harassing rave and she even got older but to know that adults treated this child the way the cheated i mean a child was in catholic school. private schools you would think you know somebody know better they do better that was not the case kids used to make fun of me saying that i had the monster or they used to just that i would get things to me like this one guy used to have really long hair she cut my hair off one day like i was when i was watching a movie in class and all of a sudden i heard says gold. and i just want my and she was like yeah i'm cutting your hair off because you're going to die soon and i just sat there and i love how continue doing it and because i'd just like as i said we've grown up i just felt like you know this is how my life is going to be and everybody just going to make fun of me but everyone did not make fun of her and at the tender age of six frank got to me oprah winfrey and i was

a millennium dream at the time that's what made donal's was doing kids that dealing with any type of onus they would send a mike to disney world i went on his show and i was sick at that time i had a fever but i was like oh i'm sick i don't want to sit next to him she just open arms to make sweetheart i don't care what you have you're on my shoulder i want you to tell me what what do you go through in like this remember me saying in talking to oprah and she was just crying my mother just stop crying because man just telling everybody i'm having a child being i'm always sick and i told them i'm gonna open it just like well how about if i send you to disney world or something and hope i didn't move on and went there i always wanted to go there and i. hope will send me to disney world i confronted her dad he said to me ain't life ain't life a bit. you know how long i've been living with this he called me and he was a spike while he was on the show why did you tell people to eat i'm positive you

shouldn't do that how do you think i'm going to look so is like who says like one though he just if i when he hears asked why it's not on the magazine or science on the he'll just get upset like he's not supportive of wine so as raven grew into her teens life with her mom became strained they took thirteen i always tell people i did try taking my life away me my mom started making really arguing in my crisis i get really mad i have it was just it was a lot to me at that i say my teenage years was like my most unlucky. and i got to the age of break six hundred seventeen i had to make realize like you know even. your mom didn't do something but you know she didn't know at the time

and i had to realize i had to put my family sense into this like. i was born with that i did x. that is you know i can't be mad at my mother what can she do you know let me make make it make your future better don't don't look beyond the path i don't look at h.l.v. as a bad thing and when my and of other youth in raven's age group who are planning to contract in h i v. the reaction of people what they're going to think of. the stigma that's the main one i think of the stigma that's why a lot of young kids the skid they get tested me on probably that they discuss stuff like that but i'm talking as they young because i'm still in the young generation that you know the that's where the big al biggest problem is that you know people accepting us. in a statement. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought

you knew. i'm charging bloggers a big picture. of the. audience technology innovation all the latest developments from around russia we've gone to the future and covered. hold it. hold it. lead. her blood. pressure. let's be. a damn good place.

to live. i wish. her luck. a long slow good luck. just see the monitor and look at it i'm. gonna make a little. if . he lifts. he. lifts.

the americans have having only two major spots you know the family and the church

to address whatever crisis they are going through because the church was the place that sent us historically the collets the church was the place of you had the illness the church and go call and support you you know of someone died and you can depend on the church to come and bring the food you know to me come in bring whatever you need even help me to bury your loved ones you know i mean that was the church of whatever you didn't have the chance of going to come in and fill that gap for you. but when maids first black america most family members were caught off guard those two points those points of comfort were not quite there you know thank god some people had great family support. most families back then did not know what he was on they were afraid you know there was not a lot of information there was

a lot of myths so we have that myth that it's not part of me i'm not gay i'm not a lesbian oh i'm a lesbian i can't catch it. i'm not in that age group i can't catch it yes it is it's it's it's in the house many victims of a child were shunned by close family members and when they turned to the church to head the stigma that initially applied to. anybody to come forward with. specially religious leaders the church you know was caught up in this is a homosexual disease and you know it's you know again you know going to hail and we're not going to you know we're not going to address that that he was so important for the black church to be there for the community because of the black church did not want to accept you because you were gay or begin to see a child being in had

a bigger sort of impact in that if you were not then allowed to potentially good that has. been known effective that effected your mother or onto your brothers or sisters because they then also felt like maybe they were part of that being a child so in the beginning it's a gay white man's disease black folks it's not out issue really when people were dying left and right by nineteen eighty six african-americans accounted for twenty five percent of those infected with hiv causes for this rapid increase were disproportionately low response of the national state and local levels adding to these external factors was the growing stigma surrounding this infection. is that somebody. an african-american has each and that person essentially says the . silence by family members and local clergy bound by fears and

denial only strengthened the growing prejudice against those infected with hiv every black family has someone who has been addicted to drugs or alcohol and someone who was gay you know so that wasn't a new phenomenon what was new was that we were not about to talk about it in public i had a minister to said to me it's a real reverend cheek. homosexuality i don't have that problem in my church has had a problem. i said how because the church twelve hundred people has a soul in twelve hundred people and easily to say that ten percent of the population this gay and lesbian and you don't see anybody so you don't have anybody in your choir you don't have anybody on your deacon board on your ministerial staff on you in your administrative office no way you don't see no one gay and as i understand homosexuality and drug addiction are two that were well entrenched within the black family but almost never openly discussed. aids in the black

family added one more to subject to be consciously ignored many times i would preach a sermon call for a family and that would have the family come and say you can't say that he was gay or you cannot say that he died of aids you can say out of cancer but they can you can say he died of aids are you kidding me all of the whole community no. so the way i used to give a round that was i would have remarks come first and of course people would get up and say well i knew when he first got infected and the family would never said a word it was like the big elephant in the room and nobody wanted to talk about it . we explored internal factors that led to the early growth in the aids epidemic in black america while doing so we learned that silence fear and denial so evident back then as undergone little more than cosmetic changes

thirty one years later. the low blood. and i have quite a few friends that were raised in the church so you know i had lots in the church service and then supplied a few churches visiting but it was something that i just didn't see. in my spirit and still to come to. enjoy the music but a lot of the other rituals just didn't sink in as i became older and found a way islam was the only way that i knew one place that i needed to go back to.

something spiritually something a little more religiously grounding. from the same date isn't anything in the koran actually says of homosexuality being gay this is just a lot of the other. laws govern by the sharia law as you know things that got a lot of the sort of what the profit were practice. where it goes into homosexuality. being a sin. when i first found out i was positive. like i said i really didn't think it would be possible i was doing a student teaching and i want all my lunch break to get my answers to get the results. and when i walked out today and he said i was positive it was like i was livin in a fog. like i was in a day. and i went back to work like nothing had ever happened but it did it devastate i didn't know

where to turn to talk to. how to tell family. i was lost. it was my mother father we were any kitchen. and my husband says oh hi how are you what's going on and they say nothing you know i had him with me there as well when it's all me you know and he's you guys to this is one involved with it in a mother was cooking we came in he said he wanted to talk and he came in my husband came in. he told us he had something to say to us and its own that i was a positive this is who i am in a relationship with a mother started crying and my father being the man he is asking so what does it mean your dresses and they bring you little he said that the days it was going on and just life floored me that started the whole argument and i just walked out you

know that put a big strain on a relationship. this is better than it was there isn't a whole lot of conversation or close to none conversation about my sexuality me being gay or made me any positive. washington d.c. carries the distinction of being ground zero for having the highest h.i.v. infection rate in america all of d.c. has an epidemic because there are unusual consolation as not being a state not even be in city where a cut out all of d.c. is that in them an epidemic level but d.c. is not so unique when compared to other major cities across the nation if you compare metro d.c. that is diminished did the disc of columbia and its suburbs metro d.c.

with metro philadelphia metro chicago metro miami were about the same there are twelve cities in the united states in which half of the people with hiv aids lives city d.c. is one of those twelve cities. we spoke to medical professionals concerning the disproportionate rise of hiv aids in the black community. forty five to fifty percent of our community be done with the disease we know how to prevent it by the way african-americans are more likely to get tested. more likely to get tested and we get tested for the results but we always don't get into care particularly in rural. areas we tend to have a physician or a clinician who has graduated from school or from college you know ten fifteen years ago when i had to cheat persons or interview positive because it was all you remember the infectious disease physicians who treated so they still don't. know

and they're not willing to. what is the level of hiv training provided for medical professionals the majority of the local hospitals and doctors offices within the district of columbia i think staff physicians nurses. personnel understand that this is not a disease of casual contact so that you go in the hospitals and you don't see red bags outside of the door you don't see signs up there of isolation just because a person is positive you may see it up there for a host of other reasons but not for being impossible. it would seem that this heightened awareness of medical professionals would lead to earlier detection of new age hiv patients six to two percent of patients who actually come into care are diagnosed with aids within a year of being testing positive for hiv let me see that again within a year of

a diagnosis of. over sixty two percent of those patients are diagnosed with those patients the majority of them were receiving medical care what it means then is that the clinicians the physicians physician assistant nurse practitioner advance practitioners pharmacists dentists did not know. all of the disease or didn't pay attention. of those who can afford medical care it appears that many medical practitioners are not adequately trained in detecting the early signs of hiv or may simply choose not to treat such patients nobody worries about being positive with syphilis and or nobody even thinks twice about most herpes infections an h. i.v. seems to carry a burden. that we just can't explain. this fear seems to be borne in

not just the general public but among medical practitioners as well we had and i had an opportunity to speak with some young physicians. just finishing up residence and a group of them were talking with a meeting we were recently and downloads is being taught in your program and told them said to us you know when we're at the hospital do t. shirts and these are residents getting ready to go to become full fledged physicians this is one of windows patients' rooms at our positive ok you know clinicians clinicians with whom each of you has been a room overnight. and we were stunned when one young woman talked about being in the clinic and the patient was each of you. is in that should be. going to another . in front of us said to her did you people say to be positive.

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