DC struggles to contain HIV epidemic

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Approximately 3 percent of African-American women in the District of Columbia carry the virus, 58 percent of whom were infected through heterosexual contact… those figures are the women who KNOW, experts think the number is actually much higher….

For the life of me, I cannot understand why urban radio is still ignoring this issue and failing a huge part of the listening audience… (scratching my head). If I was programming a station today without question, the station would be involved.   I would not give a fat baby’s ass what people or the local black churches thought.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – “Who’s next for testing?” Nathalie Boittin asked on Tuesday in a crowded waiting room at the Whitman-Walker Clinic in northwest Washington.

A young black man rose and Boittin, a community health educator, led him to get tested for the AIDS virus.

Testing has spiked at this clinic and others in the U.S. capital since an official report this week showed that 3 percent of the city’s residents are infected with HIV. Officials believe the true figure is even higher.

“There are a lot of people who don’t know they are HIV positive because they don’t want to know or are afraid to know,” said Edward Harris, a 55-year-old man who gets care at the clinic. read the whole story here