For the NNPA
CHICAGO (NNPA) – If the face of the AIDS epidemic has changed from a gay, White man’s disease to that of a Black woman, government funding of prevention and treatment doesn’t appear to be keeping pace with the trend, according to Black AIDS activists.
In order for that to change, they say the Black community has to take hold of the issue and demand the government pay attention, just like gay men did when the AIDS epidemic hit their community in the 1980s.
Toni Bond Leonard, president and CEO of African American Women Evolving, Chicago non-profit dedicated to the reproductive health of women of color, said if Blacks want money to fight the disease, it’s time to start having very frank discussions about sexuality, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections.
”When this was a gay, white man’s disease, they stood up and started demonstrating and they got money. We need something similar to that to happen in the Black community,” she said.
It will be a fight from the inside out, Leonard said, since first African Americans will have to get beyond the stigmas associated with HIV/AIDS and homosexuality.
”White, gay men grabbed it by the horns and said, ‘We need money for prevention and education.’ They were showing up on the steps of various state capitals and in Washington, D.C. and they were having discussions. There were groups handing out condoms in clubs and
bathhouses,” Leonard said. ”I don’t see that happening in the Black community.
State Rep. Constance Howard (D-34th) said she is working to bring that movement about and hopes to soon see African American HIV/AIDS rates drop significantly.
”We have this whole notion of ‘Let’s not talk about it.’ We have to get beyond the denial or we’re going to lose a whole generation of young people,” Howard said. ”It’s better to forewarn than to be sorry later on.”
Howard, who serves on the board of directors of the Let’s Talk, Let’s Test Foundation, a Chicago-based HIV/AIDS advocacy and awareness agency, said that as she saw more Blacks were becoming infected, she thought there should be more money coming into African American communities for prevention and treatment and recently secured $3 million for HIV/AIDS agencies that serve Black patients.
Half of the money will help fund African American service providers; the other $1.5 million will allow Let’s Talk, Let’s Test to assist African American HIV/AIDS organizations in securing grant monies.
The money will allow Let’s Talk, Let’s Test to develop programs that it knows will work in Black communities and help the state’s 43 Black service agencies write grants.
”We have to develop our own infrastructure, but we don’t have the resources to state our own cases,” said Lloyd Kelly, executive director of the Let’s Talk, Let’s Test Foundation.
In Chicago, the city added $500,000 to its 2007 budget for prevention. However, Kelly said for the Black community, it is almost nothing since only about 10 percent of the city’s total $2.8 million in prevention funds will go to Black AIDS organizations. On the federal level, $19.7 billion was spent in 2005 on AIDS.
”That’s an insult to the Black community,” Kelly said of the amount allocated in Chicago. ”People are allowing this to happen because they don’t understand. HIV will kill you. This is the most dangerous thing to happen to Black people since slavery.”
A combined $250,000 was issued to the South Side Help Center and Project Vida; the remainder of the funding was issued to centers that primarily serve whites, Kelly said.
Kelly said the nearly $3 million allotment is not nearly enough – especially considering it costs $50,000 annually to treat a person with HIV.
”The issue is not so much treatment as it is prevention. What are we saying, when you’re sick, we’ll take care of you?” Kelly said. Kelly warns the answer is not to take prevention money from agencies that serve whites. But there should an assessment of what resources are
needed, and where, could bring about a more equal distribution.
”That’s just see-sawing the problem,” Kelly said. ”Agencies are closing because they can’t pay the rent. We need new dollars.”
Pouring more money into prevention programs is one way to get at the problem, but talking to one another about sexuality and HIV/AIDS will begin to erase the stigma and keep infection rates down in Black communities, Kelly said.
”This is much bigger than feeling sorry for somebody who has a disease. We need to have honest conversations. We need to bring it to the table and talk about the fear and the stigma,” Kelly said.
In the long run, he added, paying for prevention programs is millions of dollars cheaper than treating the estimated more than 1 million people infected with the disease in the United States.
””HIV is nothing more than a sexually transmitted disease. We’ve been able to contain other sexually transmitted diseases. Why not this one?
Because we have done everything but apply simple common sense to this disease,” he said.
Kelly said getting treatment and prevention money funneled into agencies that serve African American communities is hard enough. It is equally difficult to get Blacks – and especially Black women – to begin to discuss transmission or prevention.
The gay, white movement early on that made government officials pay attention to the disease, he said, likely brought on the stigma and demonization of the disease in the Black community. But the movement was so strong that 25 years later, as the disease is infecting African
Americans at equally alarming rates, the policies it brought about – particularly issues of confidentiality – still control the movement, Kelly said.”That’s what’s killing us. People associate this so closely with being gay, but we can’t even say the word ‘gay’ in our communities,” Kelly
said. ”But don’t get it twisted, HIV is not a gay issue.”
As the movement grows, Black church leaders are becoming powerful allies, Kelly said.
”The ministers have changed so much. Now they’re saying that they don’t condone the behavior, but protect yourself while you’re doing it.”
Leonard said more ministers need to share the safe sex message and should start talking about HIV/AIDS in their churches.
”The Black church has got to take control of this. Black women make up a majority of their congregational numbers. Every Sunday these ministers have scores of Black women and their families there and it’s a captive audience,” Leonard said.
According to John Peller, spokesman for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, the majority of new HIV infections are among people of color and that Black women are the fastest growing number of new cases. Gay (or bisexual) Black men remain the group with the highest number of cases.
But Leonard said African American women will also have to stop blaming the ”down-low” phenomenon for their growing infection rates.
”We have to take some responsibility for how we can protect ourselves. It has to do with risky behavior. We have to work on how to reduce the risk,” Leonard said.
Kelly said every Black person in America can do that much.
”This disease is so nefarious. You can just do one little thing and it ends your life as you know it,” Kelly said. ”But if everybody just does what they can do, we can beat this disease.”