PULLMAN — Almost half of the people who become infected with HIV do so before they are age 25 and are killed by AIDS before they are 35, reported the 2003 surveillance report from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention HIV/AIDS, (CDC). Nationally the report also found 3,847 adolescents between the ages of 15-24 were diagnosed with HIV in 2003.
Washington State University Health and Wellness Services (HWS) offers free HIV testing to WSU students all year, but on Dec. 1 HWS Cougar Health Awareness Team (CHAT) are teaming up with Whitman County Health Department and GIESORC to co-sponsor an HIV campus outreach.
CHAT’s HIV Peer Counselors and WCHD, will be giving WSU students free oral swab HIV Rapid testing in Butch’s Den, CUB (L60), 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. Results are given within 30 minutes. To further the goal of increasing HIV awareness and education, there will also be demonstrations of safer sex strategies by CHAT’s HIV peer counselors and a table of educational information.
Dec. 1 is known across the globe as World AIDS Day. It started in 1988, when a group of health officials met in London to increase awareness and educate people on one of the biggest social, economic and health challenges in the world.
The disease claims over 8,000 lives a day, taking 5 lives every minute according to the National AIDS Trust, NAT.
The CDC HIV/AIDS surveillance report for 2003 found an estimated 395,317 people were living with AIDS in the USA and District of Columbia. Of those estimated people 5,102 were residents of Washington State, 380 live in the Seattle area.
HIV, Human Immunodeficiency Virus, is the virus that can seriously damage a person’s immune system and cause AIDS, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. AIDS victims do not die from the virus alone; they die from vulnerability to infections their body cannot fight off.
AIDS/HIV statistics in the USA are published by the US Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
