there are twelve cities in the united states in which half of the people with hiv aids lives within a year of a diagnosis of. over sixty two percent. are diagnosed with aids this is a problem that frankly is substantially preventable it was like the big elephant in the room and nobody wanted to talk about it there were really good public health campaigns if people were really focused on this problem you certainly should be able to a lot less a trophy a lot less human suffering. potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit stunning in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. but what we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more powdery down here to the line there's still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight. d.c. it is kind of

a pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout much of in life nobody's allowed to drive your lists of emergency vehicles are exceptions. worst. white house of the day the radio guy and club element from a quick fix i want to watch closely to go good you never seen anything like this on colored. folks.

mission free accreditation free transport charges free arrangements for free risk free studio tied free. download free blog as a plug in video for your media projects and free media and on the r.t. dot com. path to start this strange new disease affecting healthy young americans looks like this a period between the first outbreak of aids summer nine hundred eighty one and i nine hundred eighty five not only were people coming down with aids 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 who but in the back of their mind a time he may still be a little dirty secret the biggest part of this little secret is its growth across black america as other nations got to hold african-american community it's it's it's is right here is that spreading out that way described 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 and 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. so. i did everything possible to get in this position you know i wanted that you know the way i did my life was famous and free so i pretty much got what i was looking for if i'm not mistaken with him p g community clone and i think that's where our first first film

went out when they told me i didn't believe it you know because i had all these c.d.'s like now. is a cool way. in bed with my thinking about it it will way but it didn't go away and stanley's response was you know. like i already already you know i was like ok if i get it i'm like yeah. you know one again. and i probably did go get had bad day you know i would not think about it because i know i know know me so i play and we get home and my dad you know you tell me all head on head along. who want to know who won i would have buying. so many drugs to be to take my calls for me. and i had and

you know one time i had to get stats like greece has a week. i think. that be a neighbor and if you don't wish it was you know everything everything is heavy you know your day they have you very weak and you still gotta get in get it out to get these three shots a week yeah that's the way i think. i had three blood transfusions because it hit me and. so it out was an experience of in the self and after living with hiv for over thirty years if i tell you a story. that all of it you got to go through. and it's like. everybody's body is different you know everybody's body is different what i go through you may never go through then again you might go through it twice is worse so don't look at me and say oh yeah i'm opposed to no i'm not opposed to. someone

then with it every. 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 the 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 taking 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 brewing especially among young people he's a young african-american the centers for disease control have presented strong data showing that youth between ages thirteen 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 my parents found out out 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 you know when waiting for the doctor and i was in the play roles playing and they took my mom out the pay room so i guess those who are paying for the 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 pillows clears so me i'm pulling away from my doctor like mommy and still i mean toys he could he 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 standup and how she is birches blurted 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 being made so that was my biggest fear that 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 a child impossible i never expected and. 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 arm friend i say you know i went to the doctor and my doctor told me that i had 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 probably glows around the class so my do sort of back to her knowing that i was a child cry. as if i couldn't go on in crash to pull garbage bags around me like if i had to use the bathroom she let me use the bathroom or myself choose to take my school lunch away from me although the fact that me being a child be positive she was abused she was abused by i was school system other children started harassing gravely and she even got older but to know that adults treated this child the way that she did a minute 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 have 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 while 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 up 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 like everybody just going to make fun of me but everyone did not make fun of her and the tender age of six trichotomy oprah winfrey and i was a millennium dream at the time that's when madonna was was doing kids that drilling with any type of onus they would send them back to disney world i went on my show and i was sick at that time i had a fever and i was like oh i'm sick i don't want to sit next to me and she just open arms and like sweetheart i don't care what you have your on my shoulder i want you to tell me what what do you go through in like this remember me sin talk to oprah and she was just crying my mother just start crying because man just telling everybody i'm having a child being. always sick and i thought i was going down oprah 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 listening to disneyworld i confronted her dad he said to me ain't life ain't life a bitch. 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 as 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 wired 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 had it was just it was a lot to me at that i say my teenage years was like my most of.

my country isn't right sixteen 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 lily 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 in my and of other youth and raven's age group who are prone 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 escape to get tested being on probably that they discussed being on stuff like that but i'm talking as the young because i'm still in the

young generation that you know that's the that's what the big al biggest problem is that you know people accepting us and in a statement. today . these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. operations are all.

sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here sees some other part of it and realize everything in. the big picture. the official. language stream quality and enjoy your favorite. if you're away from your television well it just doesn't matter with your mobile device you can watch on t.v. any time and he was.

asking americans have having me to me to spot soon of the family in 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. and supports you you know of someone died 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 if you would have you didn't have that chance of going to come in and fill that gap for you. but when the aids 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

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 the head of the state that initially applied to. anybody willing to come for all that. special 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 i'm 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 for the truth. 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 been allowed to potentially good church has. been known effective but if it did your mother or onto your brothers or sisters because they then also felt like maybe they were part of that being the 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 lol 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

sentence into. 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 as 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 i said a problem. i said how because the church tweeting we see twelve hundred people as a so and 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 taboos 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 cannot say that he was gay or you cannot say that he died of aids you can say dad 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 get us out 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 hours later. the low blood. and i have quite a few friends that were raised in the church you know i had lots in the church service been supplied if you chose visiting but it was something that i just didn't see. in my spirit and still totally come to. enjoy the music but a lot of the other rituals just didn't sink in and as i became older and found all

way islam was the only way that i knew in the new place that i needed to go back to what i sometimes feel it's least something a little more religiously grounding. from the same date isn't anything in the koran actually says about homosexuality being gay is just a lot of the. laws govern by the sharia laws you know things that were not a part of the some of what the profit were practice. where it goes into homosexuality. it being assumed. that when i first found out i was positive. like i said i really didn't think it will 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 they said i was positive it was like i was livin in a fog. but i was in

a daze. 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 and 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 at home you know i need 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 and my husband came in. he told us he had something to say to us and i told that i was a positive this is who i'm in a relationship with a mother started crying and my father being the man he is asking so what does it

mean you lost dresses and they bring you little he said out that they said mother was going out and just life floored me that started the whole argument and i just walked out you know that put a big strain on the relationship. is different it's better than it was there isn't a whole lot of conversation or close to none conversation about my sexuality me being gay or maybe in a 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 out of 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 the missed did the disco 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 and we know how to prevent it by the way african-americans are more likely to get tested and. more likely to get to know we get tested for the results but we always don't get into care particularly in rural. remote 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 treat and they still don't know and they are 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 ancillary personnel understand that this is not a disease of casual contact so that you go in the hospitals now you don't see red bags outside of the door you don't see signs up there of isolation just because a person is a 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 hiv over six to 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 the clinic. or 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 but he seems to carry a burden. that we just can't explain. this fear seems to be born not just the general public. as well we. speak with. physicians. just finishing up residence. in your program and twelve. patients in residence getting ready to go to become full fledged physicians. patients are positive. clinicians clinicians with whom. overnight. we were stunned when one young woman talked about being in the clinic. should be.

said to her did you get. the mission free credit take should be free. free. free. free. free. free blog video for your media projects free media. it's technology innovation all the news developments from around russia we've. covered.