College Times

Issue date: 4/30/09 Section: Sex

Media Credit: Nancy Stone

Nine and a half minutes seems like a pretty small amount of time. You can eat a quick lunch, call a friend to catch up, or listen to a couple of your favorite songs.

But, every nine and a half minutes, someone in America contracts human immunodeficiency virus, more commonly known as HIV.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2006, an estimated 56,300 people became infected with HIV in the US, adding to the total of more than 1 million people who currently live with HIV. Even more shocking, of those 1 million people living with HIV, 1 out of 5 do not know they are infected.

In light of these truly scary statistics, the Obama administration will launch a five-year, $45 million HIV/AIDS awareness campaign, saying that Americans have become "complacent about the deadly illness even though it represents a serious threat to the health of our nation."

The campaign, Act Against AIDS, will include public service announcements, advertising on trains, buses and other modes of public transportation, text messages and a website, nineandahalfminutes.org.

At an annual cost of $9 million, the campaign will first target a group that nonprofit organizations overlooked for years as the disease spread: African Americans. Black people make up slightly more than 12 percent of the population, but they represent nearly half of new HIV infections and nearly half of Americans living with the disease, according to the CDC.

Carlos Castillo-Chavez, an Arizona State University professor and former AIDS researcher, said he got involved doing research in 1987, but he still sees the same problems today.

"At that point, there was a lot of things people didn't know, so the biggest problem, which still hasn't been solved yet, was to find out how many people were infected," he said. "AIDS research has exploded recently, so it looks hopeful that we'll find answers."

He also said that it has always been a problem identifying who is infected with HIV/AIDS.

"It's a very delicate area to study, if not controversial," he said. "Someone has to do it because it is very very important that people know the consequences of their actions."

Brittanie Moreno, a nursing sophomore at ASU, said that she thinks this AIDS awareness campaign is kind of unnecessary.

"With tuition rising, health care problems and the big debt everyone is facing, people are just trying to stay in their homes and ride this out," she said. "Maybe AIDS awareness should be taught in schools along with drug and sex education."

Castillo-Chavez said that if this campaign is to be successful, it needs to be long term.

"Getting HIV/AIDS is not a life sentence, but it's a radical change on your life," he said. "It means that you're going to have a very complicated life. The biggest problem is that these programs are implemented for a week or for a month, but we have to have them constantly in front of people so that they know it's still a problem."

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