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Marketing and University Communication UW-Green Bay, CL 815 2420 Nicolet Drive Green Bay, WI 54311-7001 (920) 465-2626 E-mail: hildebrs@uwgb.edu Last update: 9/26/07 |
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In
the News Archive - Year:
April 18, 2005 The struggle against AIDS and HIV addressed on global and local level SNC and UWGB host symposium By Anna Krejci
St. Norbert College president William Hynes made opening comments at an AIDS symposium held on campus on Saturday.
Before panelists shared statistics on the epidemic, Hynes painted a more personal picture of HIV and AIDS destruction on the lives of young Africans.
In Zambia, children are raised by six or seven sets of caretakers because the ones before have died from the disease, he told the crowd that had gathered at 9 a.m. in the F.K. Bemis International Center on the St. Norbert College campus.
Michael Riggs, external relations and information officer for the World Health Organization was among several panelists invited to address AIDS at the International Social Justice Symposium sponsored by SNC and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
Riggs said 8,000 people worldwide die every day from AIDS. People with AIDS or HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, number more than 39 million worldwide, he said.
Since HIV was first reported in Wisconsin in 1983, 8,700 people have contracted HIV, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services. The largest increase in the number of HIV cases reported in the state since 1997 were documented in 2004. There were 417 new cases.
In developing countries, women are being reported as having the disease in the highest numbers. Sixty percent of the 15- to 24-year-olds with HIV in the developing world are female, Riggs said.
While a high rate of women in developing countries are contracting HIV more men than women are contracting the disease in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin 78 percent of new HIV cases reported from 2002-04 pertained to men and 22 percent to women, according to a recent report released from the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services.
The report also states the increase in the number of new cases of HIV reported in 2004 were mostly contracted by men who had sex with men. From 2002-04, 55 percent of newly reported cases were found in men who had sex with men. The report states the increase could be attributed to an increase in the number of such men seeking HIV testing. From 2001-03, the number of gay men getting tested rose by 27 percent.
Blacks in Wisconsin are reporting the highest number of cases. From 2002-04, the average annual number of reported cases of HIV per 100,000 people was 48.6 among blacks and 24.9 for Hispanics. The rate was 3.8 for whites.
Panelists addressed the legal barriers surrounding the drug industry to making life-prolonging medicines available and cultural obstacles to HIV and AIDS prevention.
Kevin Roeder, a UWGB associate professor and board member of AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin, said a survey found that local victims of HIV name stigma as the second-greatest barrier to seeking medical treatment in Wisconsin.
Transportation and financial worries were the first and third barriers named, respectively, he said.
The cultural barrier to speaking openly about sex in South Africa has negatively influenced HIV/AIDS prevention in South Africa, according to Heinz Klug, a UW-Madison law professor who authored "Constituting Democracy: Law, Globalism and South Africa's Political Reconstruction."
He largely spoke of legal barriers to making drugs accessible, but at the end of the discussion he criticized Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa, for his silence about AIDS during his presidency from 1994-99.
"And while I hold that man in incredible esteem ... his greatest failure, as far as I'm concerned, was his failure to deal with this issue," Klug said.
He read several paragraphs of a speech he said Mandela made in March, finally addressing the matter.
" ... (F)or every moment we remain silent we conspire against our women, for every woman infected by HIV we destroy a generation," he quoted Mandela.
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