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Two years ago, "the monster" snuck up on my cousin and took his young life. Like in a monster movie, such as King Kong vs. Godzilla, where these behemoths destroy whole cities while battling each other, AIDS destroys the human body the same way. AIDS enters first into someone's South Philly (private parts) then spreads to their Center City (heart, lungs, kidneys, etc.) and gradually attacks their North Philly (brain,central nervous system and mind- fear,denial,disbelief). In most monster flicks, many city dwellers can see Godzilla's imposing figure looming over the horizon, thus giving them time to flee and a chance to survive. But there is no early warning or detection system to visibly see AIDS coming, except by blood or oral testing, and many times- like in my cousin's case- it's already too late. If Denzel Washington was starring in a big budget motion picture as "AIDS" (instead of a corrupt cop in Training Day), he would still say, "King Kong ain't got nothin' on me!"
Recently, Earvin "Magic" Johnson was in Philadelphia to promote HIV/AIDS awareness and to talk to students about what measures need to be taken to reduce the rate of new infections. As a Disease Intervention Specialist (DIS), I also conduct discussions about STD's with high school students who ask more questions about HIV than any other disease. After each presentation, some students choose to submit a urine sample for chlamydia and gonorrhea testing while others bombard me about how can they get tested for HIV.
The Hierarchy of Disease Control is any pregnant female with an STD, HIV/AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhea, and then chlamydia. With the advent of African-American and Latino females becoming the number one population demographic contracting HIV and eventually dying from AIDS, public health departments around this nation will have to redirect their efforts, via partner notification and other disease control measures, to help curtail this exponentially driven threat. More federal funding will also be necessary to protect the unknowing and unsuspecting female from becoming infected or at least to be notified in a timely fashion about their possible exposure to this deadly virus. This is a "Right to Know" and a "Right to Exist" issue.
One of the main reasons why African-American and Latino females are contracting HIV at a high and disproportionate rate is because of the high risk behavior of men who are "On the DL" (Down Low/ secretly Bisexual), who are what I call "Bridge Gapers" or the ones who help transmit HIV from the MSM (men who have sex with men) population to the straight heterosexual population. In prisons, situational sex (meaning the opposite sex is unavailable) is having a major impact on these females, because some of their men are going in HIV negative and coming home positive. Also, recent statistics have indicated that 1 out of 3 males are raped; therefore, it might not be such a bad idea to legalize condom usage so that the prison system won't become a breeding ground for new infections. It is not a hard stretch of the imagination to say that this country, within the next ten years, may mirror the continent of Africa as it relates to the global AIDS epidemic. The pool of undetected infections might be so great in the near future that our children may be playing Russian Roulette when it comes time for them to find a mate. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the federal agency that can help lead the charge to address these serious public health issues.
In a translation of Epidemics, Bk.1, Sect. XI, Hippocrates, considered to be the father of modern medicine, states: "Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future; practice these acts. As to disease, make a habit of two things- to help, or at least to do no harm." Dedicated public health servants (taxpayers are our boss) have pledged to uphold our mission of "Early Detection, Intervention and Prevention of Disease Transmission, Disability and Death." Through early detection and treatment, HIV becomes less of a "monster" and more like a chronic disease. Early detection and treatment can help prolong people's lives like Magic Johnson. If my cousin only knew.
Emanuel Stanley is a Disease Intervention Specialist (DIS) for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. He can be reached at Emanuel.Stanley@phila.gov or gullah2gullah@yahoo.com.
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Re: The Monster is on the Attack: AIDS ravishes Minority Communities
(Score: 1, Interesting)
by Anonymous on Dec 20, 2006 - 09:36 PM
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I think you're preaching to not only the choir, but the seminary, priesthood, and bishopry. Many of us did several tours in the war on AIDS, when the "combat" was arguably more intense - speaking of the crack/syphilis/HIV tsunami that hit in the late 80s and early 90s - before qualified case managers, treatment, or legal protections were available to those diagnosed back then.
Secondly, you may want to check Denzel Washington's filmography, where you might find an award-winning film about HIV/AIDS, which was named (ironically) "Philadelphia". The first time I saw it, I was "running paper" in crack houses just a short train ride away from Philly. I'm not saying his individual role was helpful to the cause, but the movie did help put a human face on the disease, when most people were dismissing it as a faceless affliction that only "those people" had to worry about.
Don't take this response as negative. I'm just not sure if this is the best venue for an impassioned plea for action - nearly all of us have already dedicated our careers to the nation's public health. And calling out Denzel (given your location) just seemed too ironic to ignore.
I'm sorry to hear about your cousin. I "post-tested" over 600 individual HIV-positive patients in my early career, and I wonder how many are still alive - probably none. They didn't have Magic's money or the time to wait for today's medications.
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Re: The Monster is on the Attack: AIDS ravishes Minority Communities by Anonymous on May 09, 2007 - 05:34 PM
Re: The Monster is on the Attack: AIDS ravages Minority Communities
(Score: 1, Interesting)
by Anonymous on Dec 21, 2006 - 02:47 PM
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There is some validty to this growing threat of HIV/AIDS affecting minority females at a high rate. In the early days of HIV, when it was primarily a gay white male disease, public health agencies and activists lobbied hard for local, state and federal funding to get a handle on this unknown disease and to give it a diagnoses and name. Billions of dollars and many years later, the dynamics of contracting HIV/AIDS has shifted to minority females, but I'm not sure if the funding shifted with it. Maybe, this is one of the reasons why Rep. Waxman, Ranking Minority Member of the Committee on Government Reform's Minority Office, requested an explanation of why the CDC has failed to update the Compendium of HIV Prevention Interventions with Evidence of Effectiveness document.
Rep. Waxman sent follow up letters to JLG and ML (HHS) regarding CDC's inadequate response to his congressional inquiry about the HIV Compendium. He stated in this letter: "Yet she offered no explanation of why CDC would not want to provide the prevention community with a full compilation of programs that have been found to be effective. Instead, she cited a set of journal articles and conference presentations as 'effective and expeditious methods to provide the latest available information to our colleagues and prevention partners'. This
characterization is unpersuasive. The Institute of Medicine found in 2001 that although research had yielded valuable information on interventions that reduce HIV risk, the results of this research were not being disseminated effectively". Rep. Waxman continues with the Institute of Medicine's report: "Although such research projects are valuable for the development of better social and behavioral prevention tools, their findings typiically have been disseminated in a very select manner (e.g., peer-reviewed articles) via very select mechanisms (e.g., clinical or academic journals) to a very select audience (e.g. other researchers). This strategy is effective in reaching mainly academic audiences, but it is
ineffective in disseminating the methodologies and findings to those who need them the most: state- and local-level workers who are planning, developing, adapting, and implementing prevention activities in their communities." To see the actual letter(s), go to the Committee on Government Reform- Minority Office's website and click on "Investigations", then scroll down until you come to "HIV/AIDS".
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Re: The Monster is on the Attack: AIDS ravages Minority Communities by Anonymous on Dec 22, 2006 - 09:33 AM
Re: The Monster is on the Attack: AIDS ravages Minority Communities
(Score: 1, Interesting)
by Anonymous on Dec 22, 2006 - 12:53 PM
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I have to agree with the writer that our nation is increasingly starting to mirror Africa. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are galloping strong on that continent, but we're not to far behind in terms of them riding to create death and destruction within our borders. I admire the work that Oprah Winfrey and Bono of U2 are doing with the Inspi(red) campaign to raise money and awareness about HIV/AIDS in Africa. Surely, they have suffered immensely with 15 million orphans created due to this plague. But, I'm a firm believer that before we start cleaning up somebody else's backyard, we need to clean up our own. A couple of months ago, I was shocked when I saw Peter Jennings expose` on ABC News called "Out of Control: AIDS in Black America." I learned that Atlanta (right underneath CDC's nose) is the capital for black gay males and men on the DL like San Francisco is the capital for white gay males
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Re: The Monster is on the Attack: AIDS ravages Minority Communities by Anonymous on Dec 23, 2006 - 05:54 PMRe: The Monster is on the Attack: AIDS ravages Minority Communities by Anonymous on Dec 26, 2006 - 04:02 PM
Re: The Monster is on the Attack: AIDS ravages Minority Communities
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by Anonymous on Dec 27, 2006 - 07:04 PM
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As a non-medical, I believe we have done everything humanly possible to allow this disease to florish. Back in the 50s &60s if someone had a STD it was reported and "partners" were contacted. As AIDS became associated with the gay lifestyle, there was a lot of political pressure to stop the reporting. It seems that folks in the medical field don't have the brass ones to stand up and say we have to track this. I realize, this solution won't work everywhere, but it could save SOME lives
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Re: The Monster is on the Attack: AIDS ravages Minority Communities
(Score: 1, Interesting)
by Anonymous on Jan 01, 2007 - 02:48 PM
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This is exactly why we need we need a Health Disparities focus at CDC
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Re: The Monster is on the Attack: AIDS ravages Minority Communities
(Score: 1, Interesting)
by Anonymous on Jan 02, 2007 - 04:46 PM
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*The above article was published today (Jan.2, 2007) in the Bucks County Courier Times in Pennsylvania, but no link was provided at the newspaper's website. The printed news story reads: "The fight against AIDS is changing, but is far from over"... Guest Opinion by Emanuel Stanley. The actual article was tweaked a little by the paper's editor but still contained the same basic message and material.
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Re: The Monster is on the Attack: AIDS ravages Minority Communities
(Score: 1, Interesting)
by Anonymous on Jan 06, 2007 - 03:20 PM
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In an earlier posted comment, someone alluded that some government bureaucrats were "clueless" or "out of touch with reality". This problem also extends into the executive branch of the government when the topic of HIV/AIDS comes up. In the 2004 vice presidential debate- between Vice President Cheney and challenger Senator John Edwards, moderator Gwen Ifill posed this question: "I want to talk to you about AIDS. And not about AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right here in this country where black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their counterparts. What should the government's role be in helping to end the growth of this epidemic?"
"Mr. Cheney's response to Mrs. Ifill's question was 'I had not heard those numbers with respect to African-American women. I was not aware that it was that severe an epidemic there'. How can Vice President Cheney not know these facts? The Vice President's lack of awareness about the magnitude of the AIDS epidemic in African-American communities speaks volumes about the low priority our government places on the lives of African Americans. When Mrs. Ifill asked her question, she specifically requested that the candidates focus on AIDS in the United States. But both Mr. Cheney and Senator Edwards spent most of their time talking about AIDS overseas."
Essence Magazine (October 2004)
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Re: The Monster is on the Attack: AIDS ravages Minority Communities
(Score: 1, Interesting)
by Anonymous on Jan 11, 2007 - 02:33 PM
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I'm also a former DIS. While Mr. Stanley's passion for the issue is laudable, I'm concerned that his essay stresses testing and treatment rather than prevention. His only mention of condom use is in his discussion of prison populations.
I'm stating the painfully obvious here, but isn't it better to avoid HIV infection through safe sex, rather than hoping for early detection and treatment?
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Re: The Monster is on the Attack: AIDS ravages Minority Communities by Anonymous on May 09, 2007 - 05:43 PM
Re: The Monster is on the Attack: AIDS ravages Minority Communities
(Score: 1, Interesting)
by Anonymous on Feb 20, 2007 - 01:23 PM
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I just read Anand Grover's speech at the International Conference on HIV/AIDS, Toronto,
Starting on page 10 he mentions societal discrimination as part of this monster.
"Unfortunately, this societal discrimination resulting in putting Afro-Americans into prisons translates into high HIV infection rates, much higher than other communities. They represent nearly half of all new HIV diagnosesin the US."
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