The Numbers Don't Lie

By Stacey Gates

The numbers are staggering. In our nation’s capital, the number of total cases of HIV/AIDS are “higher” than those of West Africa, Shannon L. Hader, director of Washington, DC’s HIV/AIDS Administration, told the Washington Post. In a 2008 epidemiology report by the office, they found that at least 3 percent of the city’s residents have HIV or AIDS, which translates into 15,120 residents over the age of 12 infected. And the District’s HIV/AIDS Administration distributed 1.5 million condoms last year.

"This is very, very depressing news, especially considering HIV's profound impact on minority communities," Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Health's program on infectious diseases, told the Washington Post. "And remember: The city's numbers are just based on people who've gotten tested."

Have the statistics and the numerous education campaigns fallen on deaf ears?

According to the report, while the number of young people with HIV remains low, at less than 1 percent, “STD rates are extremely high and reveling risky behavior which could lead to HIV infections as they get older.”

I was inspired to write about the HIV/AIDS crisis, especially in the District because this is where I call home, and among young people, after reading the testimony Marvelyn Brown in Essence magazine.

Brown will never forget July 17, 2003, the day that she learned she was HIV positive, at the age of 19. Brown was young, athletic, and in otherwise good health. She recounts meeting a 24-year-old male who wowed her with is good looks, nice car, his own place, and charming smile. They started having sex shortly after meeting, but used a condom. On one night, he informed her that he didn’t have a condom, and they had sex anyway. All it took was one night.

Brown recalls, “I didn't scream or fall apart. I was just numb.”

She recounted her call from her hospital bed to the man she believe infected me. “‘I'm HIV-positive,’ I told him, and he fell silent. After ten seconds, he finally said, ‘I'm sorry, baby.’ Even now, he has never admitted to knowing he had the virus when he met me—but there wasn't a hint of surprise in his voice that day.”

At times, she said, she considered suicide. But after a near-death car accident that left her with nothing more than a scratch, she’s turned her pain into action – traveling around the country speaking to hundreds of women and girls I speak to each month with a strong message of caution.

When she visits schools, she told Essence, “I tell young people this: Any sexually active person, gay or straight, has a chance of contracting this virus; those odds are dramatically decreased with condom use, and the risk is altogether eliminated with abstinence. It's not enough to protect yourself 99 percent of the time; the remaining 1 percent is all it takes for you to get this malicious virus.”

She is currently living in New York now, and is the CEO of the consulting company Marvelous Connections, and has penned a memoir qabout living with HIV with Courtney E. Martin, “The Naked Truth.”

Don’t take it from me, take it from Marvelyn, and of course, the numbers.