Let’s stay protected

This past Sunday, on September 27, was National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDs Awareness day. In 2014, Baton Rouge was considered the third city in the nation with the highest rate of new HIV cases to appear in one year. About 47,000 people are diagnosed with HIV/AIDs each year; shockingly almost half of the diagnosed are men who sleep with other men. Homosexual males only take up about four percent of the male population nationwide but account for 78 percent of new infections in males. Understand that these are really alarming numbers for the gay community and it’s very important that people get educated on the risk of having unprotected sex these days. Recent data has shown that men who sleep with other men accounted for 54 percent of ALL people living with HIV in 2011. That was only four years ago and I’m pretty sure that the statistics haven’t gotten any better.
Find the time to take twenty minutes out of your day to stop by a clinic and get tested. There are clinics that provide free testing with same day results. One more person that knows their status is one more person that could be saved in the long run. You should get tested at least twice a year, every six months, to verify that your status hasn’t changed. Many people refuse to get tested because there is a chance that they might have an STD/STI, but the quicker you find out the easier it would be to treat. Symptoms for HIV/AIDs do not show up rapidly. People could go months up to years without knowing that they are HIV positive; that’s why it’s so important to get frequently tested. At the end of 2012, there was an estimated 62,400 youth (ages 13-24) living with HIV in the United States. Of these, 32,000 were living with undiagnosed HIV infection.
This year I was devastated when a good friend of mine came to me and told me that they were diagnosed with HIV. Yes, he’s a young gay male living in a city with one of the highest incidence rates. What killed me the most was the fact that it was the first and only time he participated in unprotected sex and lord behold he was infected just like that. One slip up has changed his life forever. Some people think that it could never happen to them; that they’re better than those diagnosed with this virus. If that is you, I just want to let you know that no one on this good green earth is above getting infected with HIV. There are people that are knowingly having unprotected sex and purposefully spreading the HIV virus. Just take the time to stop and think about the things that you are doing before it becomes to late. If you are diagnosed with HIV/AIDs, I want to let you know that it is not the end of the world. You can still live a long and healthy life by taking only one pill a day. I encourage everyone who hasn’t been tested in the past four months to go get tested as soon as you can. Get involved and help spread the knowledge of this epidemic, that’s the only way we will start seeing a change. #knowledgeispower