As part of the Federal Action Plan for 2016 to 2020, 170 action items will be assigned to federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to address the AIDS epidemic, the White House said in a statement.
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On World Aids Day, (marked every December 1) the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) released chilling statistics of HIV infections among the adolescent population, which places Kenya among six countries worst hit by the Aids scourge worldwide.
Fiza Irfan of the Lansing Area AIDS Network explained, “Socially it’s still hard to live with the disease just because a lot of people are not educated about it. people do not know that it’s very treatable”.
Furthermore, he said that discrimination and stigma that exist in our healthcare system and society prevent people who are aware of their HIV-status from seeking treatment. HASA For All will cost $99 million per year; according to Politico New York, the administration hopes to secure additional funding for this initiative by 2017. They’re a non-profit now caring for more than half a million HIV AIDS patients around the world.
“If we were all tested then we could really identify who is living with HIV and who isn’t and we could get people into care”, HIV Services Supervisor, Kelly Kibirige said.
Of the 321 people testing positive for HIV from 1983 to the end of past year, 70% are men and 30%, women. Many of those infections are in Africa.
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John said that so much work is still pending which is to be done. Especially for us as young people, letting people see the young faces out here knowing that we’re in support and that you shouldn’t be nervous or afraid to get tested. In 2014 alone, two million people became newly infected and 1.2 million died from AIDS. “And out of that 50,000, maybe about one-third are unaware they have been infected”. City Councilman Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan), who is HIV positive, at the event said the city’s new funding aligns with Cuomo’s blueprint to fight the virus. Sen.
