World AIDS Day highlights challenges of facing the disease

In March 2002, after hearing rumors that her partner was infected with HIV, Nancy Santiago got tested. When the results came back, her doctor gave her a hug and a referral to care.

"Ten years later, I'm still here" - she didn't even need antiretrovirals until four years ago - "and I have a lot to do in the future," said the mother of five and grandmother of 10 from North Philadelphia.

Santiago, 54, spoke Friday at a City Hall news conference, one of scores around the globe highlighting various challenges - hers involved the Latino community - on the occasion of World AIDS Day on Saturday.

Thirty-one years into the pandemic, statistics that once showed terrifying year-to-year increases have settled into a frustrating plateau that defies efforts to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.

"The HIV epidemic in the United States highlights inequities," said Jonathan Mermin, director of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "One is that gay and bisexual men are over 40 times more likely to have HIV than heterosexuals, and urban areas of the United States have higher HIV prevalence than rural areas."

Another is youth. While powerful drugs have allowed people with HIV to live into old age, about a quarter of the 50,000 new infections every year are among ages 13 to 24, the CDC reports. Sixty percent of them don't know that they are infected, and they pass it on.

Several risk factors combine in the Latino community, whose members are disproportionately young, poor, without access to health care, and may not speak English. Experts say differences among populations from different countries and from city to city call for targeted strategies.

Puerto Ricans, for example, are more likely to have become infected through intravenous drug use, whereas for Mexican Americans, as for whites and African Americans, by far the biggest risk factor is men having sex with men, Latino leaders said.

"Poverty is an incredible factor for Latinos in Philadelphia," said Elicia Gonzales, executive director of GALAEI, the Gay and Lesbian Latino AIDS Education Initiative.

Particularly alarming to groups that work to slow the spread of disease here, Gonzales said, is that 34 percent of infected Latinos are diagnosed with AIDS, the disease caused by the HIV virus, within one year of their first HIV-positive test, compared with 31 percent of African Americans and 16 percent of whites.

A quick progression to AIDS generally means that a person had been infected for a while and may have transmitted the virus to others. It also shows the patient is sicker and the prognosis worse.

Latinos accounted for 13.3 percent of the 712 new HIV diagnoses in Philadelphia last year, but 14.7 percent of new AIDS diagnoses. (African Americans make up the vast majority of new HIV diagnoses in the city, 69.9 percent; whites accounted for 15.4 percent, and Asians 0.7 percent.)

Friday's news conference was organized by a coalition of Latino service organizations to publicly commit to the first National Latino HIV/AIDS Agenda, announced in October "to build a momentum across the country in different communities" to address the problem in different ways, said Francisco Ruiz, who spearheaded the initiative as chairman of the National Latino AIDS Action Network.

Los Angeles, he said, is focusing on stigma in the faith community; Miami is using local celebrities in media campaigns to reach Latino gay men.

Philadelphia is planning to expand outreach efforts by partnering with community-based groups and expanding testing.

Free HIV screening will be offered in the coming days:

Saturday, 6 to 11 p.m., Miss Diva Queen Pageant, Deja Vu Social Club, 519 W. Erie Ave.

Monday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., World AIDS Day event at the Mexican consulate, 111 S. Independence Mall East.

Thursday, 7 to 11 p.m., at a dance party at Club Palladium, 229 W. Allegheny Ave.