El Paso Group on Mission to Keep HIV/AIDS Infection Rate Low

El Paso's rate of HIV and AIDS infections is relatively low for a city its size.

But even the approximately 1,700 HIV/AIDS cases are too many for International AIDS Empowerment in El Paso.

"Even through our numbers don't necessarily show huge infection rates, there is still a significant portion who don't get tested," said Antonio Martinez, the case management director for International AIDS Empowerment in El Paso.

That is why awareness is again the major emphasis of the 19th International AIDS Empowerment AIDS Walk and 5K on Saturday at Memorial Park.

"For a community our size, 1,700 is low figure and some people would argue, 'Why then do we need HIV education, why do we need so much treatment dollars if we don't have that many people infected?' " Martinez said. "Our position as an organization is our numbers are low and we want them to stay that way."

More than 1,000 people are expect to participate in the walk and run. The event raises money for patient care and support service, and every dime stays in El Paso.

Organizers say science has made major advances in treatment, but treatment means nothing if a patient doesn't know about it and seek it.

"The whole key is prevention," Martinez said. "Prevention is supposed to be before it gets big and out of control, and that's what we're focusing on our efforts."

The International AIDS Empowerment is concerned about two demographics -- women and men between the ages of 16 and 24.

La Fe Clinic, one of two Ryan White clinics that provide HIV/AIDS services to unfunded patients, reports a 28 percent increase in female HIV-positive cases since 2008.
"Since its onset, HIV/AIDS has been a male-dominated disease," Martinez said. "Most of the messaging, the prevention and education has been for men, so the message has not always reached women."

One possible explanation for the increase is that women are unknowingly being infected by their boyfriends or husbands.

"We've had a new special population develop that's come to light, and that's what we call men who are on the down low," Martinez said. "These are men who have girlfriends or wives, but they also have male partners on the side."

Skip Rosenthal, International AIDS Empowerment executive director, points to a different population that is in danger.

"We've clearly seen in the past year or two an increase in young men between 16 and 24 who are having sex with other men," Rosenthal said. "We haven't seen too much of that in El Paso before."

Rosenthal said in the past, gay men and women would leave El Paso for a bigger city, where they would become infected, and then return home.

"The people we're talking about now are people who have been infected at a young age while living in El Paso," he said. "This is the first time we're really seeing those kinds of numbers coming into the clinic."

Rosenthal could not provide specific numbers because the data are not current.

"The latest data we have is from 2009," he said. "But we know this is happening because we're there on the front lines helping these young men."

Rosenthal said one possible reason for young men being infected now is a lack of HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns directed at their demographic after 2001.

"The Centers for Disease Control decided instead of doing campaigns for high-risk negatives, they were gearing their campaigns toward predominately people who were positive," Rosenthal said. "The messages on the billboards or messages on the radio toward high-risk negatives all stopped in 2001. That kind of void in HIV prevention is really starting to affect us now, which is why we are seeing an increase in this particular demographic."

He said it should get better once President Barrack Obama's National HIV/AIDS Strategy kicks in.

The strategy details Obama's three goals -- reduce the number of new HIV infections; increase access to care and improve health outcomes for people living with HIV; and reduce HIV-related health disparities.

Rosenthal said the local organization is spreading the word on the dangers of HIV and AIDS to middle- and high-school students through its Caring Through Education Program.

"People with HIV give talks to high-school and middle-school students about living with HIV and how it has affected them," he said. "Most of those students have never seen anyone with HIV or AIDS. These are the people who are at highest risk, and we need to start talking about HIV and stop mystifying it and start to realize that people with HIV live in El Paso."

In the meantime, Rosenthal hopes that events such as the AIDS Walk draw attention to HIV and AIDS.

"This year we have a pet walk," he said. "We have a new program called Pets Are Wonderful Support, or PAWS, where we adopt animals from the Humane Society for our clients who would like to have a pet but can't because the cost or they're afraid they can't take of them or they can't walk them."

Through the program, a member of International AIDS Empowerment takes a client to the Humane Society and together they pick out dog or cat.

"We take them to the vet to get their shots," he said. "We also pay twice a year for them to be groomed and cut and shampooed and we have a pet food pantry, too."

AIDS first was reported in the United States in 1981. The disease first was called gay related immune disease, then HTLV-3 and finally acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Thirty years later, new drugs have changed AIDS and HIV from a mysterious killer to a manageable chronic illness, like diabetes or heart disease.

"The HIV diagnosis is not a death sentence," said El Pasoan Bruno Hernandez, who has been living with AIDS for 19 years. "Not even a full-blown AIDS diagnosis is a death sentence."

Hernandez, a youthful-looking 60-year-old, said receiving a positive diagnose is still a life-changing situation.

"You are about to change someone's world," said Hernandez, who helps mentor newly diagnosed HIV/AIDS patients. "A husband is going to be facing his wife or his partner and telling him that he brought something into the home that could actually kill him."

There is also that stigma of HIV and AIDS being a gay man's disease.

"Just the fact that you are bringing a HIV diagnosis, right away people associate it with sex, and that isn't so," he said. "A lot of times it is through intravenous drug use."

Hernandez acknowledges that his job is tough -- that it's never easy to tell someone he or she has HIV or AIDS. "I have empathy for them," he said. "I, too, was diagnosed 19 years ago with full-blown AIDS, so I know exactly what's going on. I know exactly that feeling of (he takes a deep breath), 'Holy mackerel, how did this happen?' "

He has walked in their shoes and knows firsthand the many questions and concerns his clients have.

"They come in and they're shattered, looking like the poster child for HIV in the Third World," he said. "And then they see me and they say, 'You have it,' and I say, 'Yes, I've been living with it for 19 years.' I try very hard to present a very positive outlook."

The Friends of AIDS Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.

TOGETHER WE REMAIN STRONG!