World AIDS Day comes to UNCP

By Jackie Colonel
Staff Writer

World AIDS Day (WAD) is a campaign to increase awareness of HIV-related stigma and discrimination. WAD is on December 1; however, UNCP is recognizing it on November 19 due to conflicts with holiday breaks and exams.

To help campaign about HIV and AIDS, UNCP will be hosting a seminar by Dr. Charles Stewart, who is a physician at McCain Hospital who works mostly with HIV and AIDS patients. Stewart will be speaking from 10-11 a.m. in the University Center lounge on Nov 19.
Cora Bullard of Student Health Services (SHS) has been working with Melanie Clark of LSOP to bring the seminar together.

“Dr. Stewart has a lot of HIV and AIDS knowledge. I hope he will make students more aware of how engaging in unprotected sex will affect their lives,” Bullard said.

But UNCP doesn’t wait for World AIDS Day to educate and assist students with the dangers of HIV and AIDS. UNCP has offered free HIV screening to students for the last ten years. “Most other universities are just jumping on that bandwagon to give free screening,” Bullard said.

In the past year, UNCP has had to double the number of free HIV screenings offered. Bullard said that at one time, the screenings were booked a month in advance, which closed many students out of the opportunity.

To continue to educate about HIV and AIDS, UNCP Health Services was one of 12 universities that received a grant from the state’s Department of Health and Human Services. UNCP’s grant was around $8000.

With this grant, SHS is beginning an advisory board, and training students on peer education of HIV. The grant is also assisting the purchase of more condoms and brochures for students to receive free from SHS.

Lori Wiggins, Registered Nurse for Student Health Services, gives presentations in freshman seminar classes to continually educate students on the dangers of unprotected sex and how you can be affected.

Nationally, almost one million people are affected with HIV and AIDS. Those most at risk are drug users, young teens, people of color, or gay men who meet partners online. Five million people were living with AIDS across the world last year. Of those, three million died.

“A lot of the time, if you have one sexually transmitted disease (STD) you will have a second one. At Student Health Services, we sign you up for free HIV screening if we find that you are infected with an STD,” Bullard said.

If you would like to take advantage of a free HIV screening, there are two more opportunities this semester on Nov 12 and Dec 3. The times are from 9-11 a.m. To sign up, call 521-6219.

Five people worldwide die of AIDS every minute of every day. HIV has hit every corner of the globe, infecting more than 42 million men, women and children, 5 million of them last year alone.

“Do you have time?” is the National AIDS Trust’s World AIDS Day 2003 campaign to increase awareness of HIV-related stigma and discrimination.

Stigma and discrimination are recognized as major factors fuelling the global HIV epidemic, creating a climate of fear and ignorance and a reluctance to confront rising infection rates.

In 2000 alone, AIDS claimed 3 million people worldwide. That’s over 8,000 people every day. But the story does not end there: just under 14,000 new cases of HIV infections occur every single day.
95 percent of all AIDS cases occur in the world’s poorest countries.

In several southern African countries, at least one in five adults is HIV positive. In 2000, the HIV prevalence rate among pregnant women in South Africa rose to its highest level ever: 24.5 percent bringing to 4.7 million the estimated total number of South Africans living with the virus.