Post by POETICVIBEZ on May 16, 2005 12:32:47 GMT -5
HIV/AIDS in Black America
Produced By Markette Smith, BET.com Staff Writer
The Country:
Region: North America
Capital City: Washington, D.C.
Area: 9, 631, 418 sq km, about three-tenths the size of Africa
Life Expectancy: 77 years
Black Population: 37, 800, 557 (13 percent of the American population)
The low down on HIV/AIDS in Black America:
HIV Infected: 240,000-325,000
AIDS Deaths: 185,000
AIDS Orphans: Not Available
African Americans make up approximately 13 percent of the American population, but account for 50 percent of all new HIV infections in the country, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control.
But statistics hardly ever tell the whole story. Read this firsthand account of how one person’s life was affected by AIDS when his father, a psychologist, became infected:
Torrence, New York-- My father and I moved to South Carolina from New York City when I was 7 years old. It was just the two of us because my mother had died a year earlier. We wanted to start a new life in a new place, and a new job opportunity in the South was just what my father needed. My father was a psychologist, with a strong passion in the areas of substance abuse and addiction. He found a rehabilitation and treatment center that was expanding its services and my father jumped at the opportunity to be involved.
Life was grand, and all was well. My father was in a new relationship and “Jackie” and her children lived with us and we were one big happy family. Eventually in the summer of 1990, everything changed. Jackie wasn’t around as much, and my father mysteriously had a flu that just wouldn’t let up.
I was eight years old, approaching my ninth birthday. Life changed from Jackie not being around, to Jackie just being gone. My father continued to get sick, and being the oldest child in the house, I was forced to try and take over. I struggled to keep my father well and the family afloat. The change in my father’s condition started to drastically change. A former amateur bodybuilder, my father dwindled to almost half his body weight. His skin became covered with dark blotchy lesions, and his energy level was non-existent. I walked daily to the local store, desperately trying to find food that my father might have been able to keep down, and couldn’t. I spent the remainder of that summer nursing a man I once considered indestructible. He begged me to not to worry our family in New York City by telling them that he was sick and I respected and honored that request, and I wonder if I made a mistake.
Finally, Jackie did return. She came through the door, followed by her sister. Ironically, Jackie suffered from intravenous heroin and cocaine addiction—my father’s area of special interest. I learned later that her sister had taken her away so that she could get help. She finally came back to pack her bags and pick-up her children.
That same day, my father and I flew home to New York where family met us and immediately placed him in the pital. Right before Thanksgiving, after another two months of excruciating pain, my father died. I was nine years old.
I grew assuming my father died of cancer, because in my young mind, everyone that I had known to die had died of cancer. That’s just what people died from. In my eyes, I had yet to be affected by HIV/AIDS. It wasn’t until a few years later when a family member mistakenly told me that my father died of AIDS while we were at an AIDS awareness program together. That day I involuntarily became part of a community, the community of people who have lost loved ones to the virus. Maybe one day, this community won’t continue to grow. I hope that one day, that community no longer even needs to exist.
Source: National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention Global AIDS Program, Centers for Disease Control and the CIA World Fact book
Produced By Markette Smith, BET.com Staff Writer
The Country:
Region: North America
Capital City: Washington, D.C.
Area: 9, 631, 418 sq km, about three-tenths the size of Africa
Life Expectancy: 77 years
Black Population: 37, 800, 557 (13 percent of the American population)
The low down on HIV/AIDS in Black America:
HIV Infected: 240,000-325,000
AIDS Deaths: 185,000
AIDS Orphans: Not Available
African Americans make up approximately 13 percent of the American population, but account for 50 percent of all new HIV infections in the country, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control.
But statistics hardly ever tell the whole story. Read this firsthand account of how one person’s life was affected by AIDS when his father, a psychologist, became infected:
Torrence, New York-- My father and I moved to South Carolina from New York City when I was 7 years old. It was just the two of us because my mother had died a year earlier. We wanted to start a new life in a new place, and a new job opportunity in the South was just what my father needed. My father was a psychologist, with a strong passion in the areas of substance abuse and addiction. He found a rehabilitation and treatment center that was expanding its services and my father jumped at the opportunity to be involved.
Life was grand, and all was well. My father was in a new relationship and “Jackie” and her children lived with us and we were one big happy family. Eventually in the summer of 1990, everything changed. Jackie wasn’t around as much, and my father mysteriously had a flu that just wouldn’t let up.
I was eight years old, approaching my ninth birthday. Life changed from Jackie not being around, to Jackie just being gone. My father continued to get sick, and being the oldest child in the house, I was forced to try and take over. I struggled to keep my father well and the family afloat. The change in my father’s condition started to drastically change. A former amateur bodybuilder, my father dwindled to almost half his body weight. His skin became covered with dark blotchy lesions, and his energy level was non-existent. I walked daily to the local store, desperately trying to find food that my father might have been able to keep down, and couldn’t. I spent the remainder of that summer nursing a man I once considered indestructible. He begged me to not to worry our family in New York City by telling them that he was sick and I respected and honored that request, and I wonder if I made a mistake.
Finally, Jackie did return. She came through the door, followed by her sister. Ironically, Jackie suffered from intravenous heroin and cocaine addiction—my father’s area of special interest. I learned later that her sister had taken her away so that she could get help. She finally came back to pack her bags and pick-up her children.
That same day, my father and I flew home to New York where family met us and immediately placed him in the pital. Right before Thanksgiving, after another two months of excruciating pain, my father died. I was nine years old.
I grew assuming my father died of cancer, because in my young mind, everyone that I had known to die had died of cancer. That’s just what people died from. In my eyes, I had yet to be affected by HIV/AIDS. It wasn’t until a few years later when a family member mistakenly told me that my father died of AIDS while we were at an AIDS awareness program together. That day I involuntarily became part of a community, the community of people who have lost loved ones to the virus. Maybe one day, this community won’t continue to grow. I hope that one day, that community no longer even needs to exist.
Source: National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention Global AIDS Program, Centers for Disease Control and the CIA World Fact book
