South Florida Outreach Programs Battle AIDS One Fight at a Time
At a recent HIV and AIDS testing site at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, only five people showed up. While the low turnout may be disappointing, leaders of AIDS organizations say they don’t gauge their successes by individual battles. They are looking at the bigger picture.
Twenty years after the discovery first AIDS diagnosis, organizations continue to face a formidable foe in South Florida, home to the third-largest incidence of HIV/AIDS in the United States.
The state of Florida is third in the nation in the total number of AIDS cases, second in the number of pediatric cases. Miami-Dade has the second highest number of people living with AIDS among large U.S. metropolitan areas. Depending on the year, Broward and Miami-Dade counties take turns at being Florida’s No.1 area for people living with AIDS.
But the League Against AIDS, Inc., in conjunction with other local organizations, is campaigning to move forward with efforts to curb the disease. The league, a nonprofit organization that services clients throughout Central and South Florida who are infected with AIDS, sponsored recent festivities for National AIDS Awareness Day, including the Biltmore testing site, a project of Union Positiva, an AIDS counseling, testing, referral and intervention organization.
"There was a need to focus on the Hispanic community and I volunteered," said the league’s executive director, Manny Laureano-Vega. The league sets itself apart from other organizations because it offers services in three languages and is sensitive to the culture and access to healthcare, said Laureano-Vega, who founded the organization 20 years ago after working for the Health Department and Jackson Memorial Hospital. The league currently works with 260 clients.
Union Positiva’s testing vans are run throughout the area - from the Biltmore to various ethnic enclaves throughout South Florida, said Ramon Soto, program director at Union Positiva.
"Each culture has different values that need to be taken into consideration so we work hard to make sure we respect those cultures by adapting and tailoring each intervention to the specific needs of the person," Soto said. "We want to make sure our point gets across to the person loud and clear."
Organizations such as the League Against AIDS and Union Positiva are seeing their hard work pay off, Laureano-Vega said.
"Though we have a constant flow of clients, the Health Department shows a decrease in the number of infected people over the past three years," he said
New treatment and testing have helped the cause, according to the AIDS prevention community. Living with AIDS has come a long way since the "cocktail" of medications clients were subjected to five or six times a day. Today patients are still given a combination of drugs. However, the medications have been combined into one or two pills only once or twice a day.
Testing is done in a new rapid method, which produces results within 20 to 40 minutes. It can be done through an oral swab or a finger stick. The finger stick has a 99.6 percent accuracy rate whereas the oral swab has a 99.3 percent, Soto said.
According to the Department of Health, as of the end of 2006 there are 104,036 known AIDS cases and 36,787 known HIV cases in Florida. While the battle to fight AIDS in South Florida is decreasing on a whole, there are still rising numbers for certain groups.
In Miami-Dade, blacks make up half of AIDS cases but only 19 percent of the population, according to the most recent statistics provided by the Florida Department of Health’s Bureau of HIV/AIDS. Whites number 13 percent of AIDS cases and are 21 percent of the population. Hispanics account for 36 percent of AIDS cases and are nearly 60 percent of the population.
While the approve statistics are not decreasing, the number of babies born with HIV is dropping drastically. Over the past three years the rate of perinatal HIV/AIDS has dropped from 94 percent to 80 percent.
"Women that are pregnant are seeking out treatment in the early stages of pregnancy and because of this, their babies are being protected," Vega said.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
The League Against AIDS and Union Positiva encourage people to get tested and become educated about AIDS and HIV. Testing is free and confidential. The League Against AIDS is located at 28 W. Flagler St. in Miami. Union Positiva is located at 1901 SW First St. in Miami.
