Huntington News

Issue date: 12/6/06 Section: News

Media Credit: News staff photo/Aram Boghosian Brian Havery speaks to students as a part of AIDS Awareness Week.

According to statistics from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control, AIDS is the top cause of death for African-American women between the ages of 25 and 34 years old.

Of these women, 75 percent are infected through heterosexual contact.

Brian Havery, a 1998 Northeastern graduate who has worked professionally with people who have HIV and AIDS, put the epidemic in perspective Tuesday night at the African-American Institute as he spoke about the spread, dangers, impact and treatment of the disease.

"Black women are 23 times as likely to be infected as white women and four times as likely as Hispanic women," she said.

Havery worked as a budget analyst, and later with the government of Barbados in drug procurement and management.

"We want to have really informed results, so we need to have a no-holds-barred environment," he said. "Only by doing this can we come to some serious conclusions."

Speaking to a predominantly African-American audience, Havery stressed that "HIV is affecting people of color and it's killing them."

Most African-American men with HIV or AIDS are infected through homosexual activity, he said, attributing it to the high proportion of African-American men in the prison system.

"A lot of guys in prison do not willingly engage in sex, they have no choice in it," Havery said.

When these men are reintroduced into the community, they spread the disease through heterosexual contact, he said.

According to the statistics, 44 percent of men infected with HIV between 2001 and 2004 were African-American, while only 13.4 percent of the national population was African-American.

"HIV is serious because it is affecting the productive population of the world," Havery said, stressing that the people infected with HIV are usually the ones responsible for keeping an economy strong and for raising future generations.

"AIDS is one disease that could have a serious impact on the world population very easily," he said, saying 117 million people will die worldwide in the next 24 years if treatment methods do not change.

Improved access to medication could reduce that statistic to 89 million, he said.

Continued...

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