Saturday, Dec. 1, is World AIDS Day, a day designed to raise global awareness to the issues surrounding Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). It is a day to raise awareness to the ongoing fight against the disease and in remembrance of the many millions of people who have died because of the disease.
This year’s theme for World AIDS Day is Getting to Zero highlighting the eventual goal of getting to an AIDs-free generation where infection is rare at best.
Brief history of AIDS
The disease we now know as AIDS has a brief but significant history that goes back a more than three decades. Jun. 5, 1981 in Los Angeles, Dr. Michael Gottlieb, published a report that called the initial cases Pneumocystis carinii pneumonis or PCP.
In his report Dr. Gottlieb, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, described his patients as “otherwise healthy young gay patients experiencing fungal infections and PCP.”
Initially, the proposed name for the disease was “Gay-related immune deficiency” (GRID) but the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and various federal agencies decided that that name did not accurately describe the demographics of those infected and in 1982 named the disease Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS as we know it as today.
Since then an estimated 30 million people have died of the disease worldwide and today an estimated 34.2 million people live with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the virus that leads to AIDS, according to the latest report released by the United Nations Program on AIDS (UNAIDS) in 2011.
In the United States, while infections are not as prevalent as in less developed countries the numbers are still staggering. The CDC estimates that more than 1.7 million Americans have been infected with HIV since the discovery of the disease and that approximately 619,000 Americans have died since the epidemic began. To provide context, that is more casualties than America’s deadliest war, the Civil War in which 618,222 people were lost on both sides.
In San Diego, according to the County HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Unit, 7,300 San Diegans have been claimed by the disease and as of the latest report by the same unit as many as 7,221 live with the disease today.
Fighting HIV/AIDS on a local level
Locally, various organizations do amazing work in providing services for people diagnosed with HIV or AIDS. In an effort to highlight the work of these organizations San Diego LGBT Weekly spoke with some of their leaders.
Social support: Pozabilities
“The first big step is to get out of the house,” said Jerry Turner, chairman of San Diego Pozabilities. A support group for HIV-affected persons. “There is such a stigma even today and it’s important that people who are diagnosed have groups like this to come to.”
San Diego Pozabilities meets weekly at Filter Coffee House in Hillcrest on Wednesday’s and Saturdays at 10 a.m. The group provides a safe place for HIV positive individuals to network and support each other socially as well as connect with individuals who can point them to services that might be helpful.
For twelve years the group has held a monthly bonfire at Vacation Isle in Mission Beach. The bonfire takes place on the last Tuesday of the month, except in December when it is held New Year’s Eve. A list of events for HIV positive people is listed on their Web site, sandiegopozabilities.com
Service providers: Being Alive and The Center
Being Alive San Diego and the San Diego LGBT Community Center are the leading go-to places for people living with HIV and AIDs. Both organizations provide counseling, and can connect HIV positive persons with resources such as medical care, food assistance and enrollment in federal programs designed to help people diagnosed with HIV or AIDS.
“One of the first things people need to do when they are diagnosed is get over to Being alive,” Jerry Turner told LGBT Weekly. “Between Being Alive, The Center and coming to groups like Pozabilites we can get you to where you need to go.”
Being Alive: 619-291-1400.
San Diego LGBT Community Center: is 619-692-2077.
Mama’s Kitchen
“One of the most critical issues is to bring awareness to HIV and AIDs as it currently impacts our community.” said Alberto Cortes, executive director of Mama’s Kitchen. “Through the years this has ceased to be a front page issue in spite of the fact of the tens of thousands of new infections we see annually. Also it’s important to speak to the fact that many people have trouble with basic health care and economic issues. We see that in the 340 daily meals we provide to people in our community who are diagnosed with AIDS or cancer.”
Mama’s Kitchen has been providing food to HIV, AIDS and cancer patients since 1990 and in March of this year celebrated serving its six millionth meal. This Saturday they will be holding their 20th annual Tree of Life event at Village Hillcrest, 3965 Fifth Ave. in San Diego from 5-7 p.m. to commemorate World AIDs Day.
Testing and prevention: Planned Parenthood, Lead the Way San Diego and Testing Together
While many this World AIDs Day will focus on those lost, others will also advocate prevention and testing.
“Many people assume that, because of our name, Planned Parenthood only offers contraception,” said Jennifer Coburn, director of communications and marketing for Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest. “But we are also a leading provider of STD and HIV testing. We’re here for every person in every community regardless of their income, insurance status, race, gender or sexual orientation.”
Planned Parenthood, The County of San Diego and Lead The Way all provide testing for STDs and HIV.
Planned Parenthood has 10 Health Centers within an eleven mile radius of the 92103 area code. To find a location near you go to plannedparenthood.com/healthcenter and enter your zip code.
The County of San Diego provides free and anonymous testing at the Health and Human Services office located at 3851 Rosecrans Street in San Diego and is open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Lead the Way San Diego will be hosting free testing on World AIDs Day this Saturday at two locations – the Medical Center Pharmacy at 3904 Park Blvd. and the Lead the Way storefront at 3830 Park Blvd. in Hillcrest, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Testing Together, a new couples HIV testing and counseling program based at Emory University and offered at the UC San Diego AntiViral Research Center (AVRC), hopes to bring honesty and openness to sexual relationships within gay couples in an attempt to reduce HIV transmission among gay men. Testing Together, funded by the MAC AIDS Fund, provides gay couples with free, confidential HIV testing. Both men in the couple get tested together, get their results together and receive counseling together.
“We know from our recent research that by testing together and getting results together couples can start an ongoing healthy conversation about HIV and talk openly about building a plan to address sexual health issues in their relationship,” said Testing Together project director Patrick
Sullivan, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology at Emory, in a news release announcing the program.
San Diego Pozabilities meets at Filter Coffee House in North Park not at the one in Hillcrest. It’s at 4096 30th Street.
One of the beauties of Pozabilities is that it is totally run by volunteers and receives no support from any government agency and very little from any of the non-profits. In that sense it is very much a reflection of the early AIDS organizations: the community taking care of its own because there was no help from the “outside”.