Are You Part of the 3

As I grabbed my OJ and settled into my couch yesterday to clip coupons and read the Post... my eyes were quickly grabbed by the headline announcing that at least 3% of D.C.'s residents have HIV or AIDS. While I always knew the HIV rate in DC was high... I thought after the last expose a few years ago the rate had to start trending downward.

What is most shocking is that the health department constitutes 1% as an epedimic and right here in the President's back yard, the Nation's capital has rates higher than some parts of West Africa. In real numbers this means over 15,000 of the city's more than 500,000 residents are positive. The report also found that almost half of those who had connections to the parts of the city with the highest AIDS prevalence and poverty rates said they had overlapping sexual partners within the past 12 months, three in five said they were aware of their own HIV status, and three in 10 said they had used a condom the last time they had sex.

After reading the article... I picked up the phone to call a friend that has been Part of the 3% for over ten years now. Before I could even say good morning... he was already discussing the article. We had both came to the conclusion that while there are a number of causes for this increase the main cause is that people just do not care. He reminded me of a time when his uncle, who is now in his 50s, and his friends would loose friends frequently because of AIDS and now that you do not see it happening as often and people are able to live with HIV... people just do not care or take it as serious.

Men having sex with men has remained the disease's leading mode of transmission. However, according to the report heterosexual transmission and injection drug use closely follow. Three percent of black women carry the virus, partly a result of the increase in heterosexual transmissions.



Everyone knows about HIV now... hell even my 10yo nephew knows what it is. So education can not continuely be the blame for this but the nonchalant attitude towards sex, thinking its a 'gay' disease, and lack of loving one's self is. So now that this has hit the front and national pages once again it will be interesting to see what happens this time around.