Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was diagnosed in the United States in the late 1970s.
Since then, AIDS has killed more than 204,000 Americans - half in the past few years alone.
Another 185,000 of the one million infected with the HIV virus are also expected to die.
Nearly half of those diagnosed with the virus are blacks and Latinos.
Women and youth in rural Southern communities now constitute the fastest
growing segment of people with AIDS. Despite such alarming numbers,
the federal and state governments have been slow in implementing programs to
stop the spread of AIDS.
In place of government inactivity, a number of local organizations have emerged.
One organization, the South Carolina AIDS Education Network, formed in 1985 to combat
the growing number of AIDS cases. Like many local organizations,
this organization suffers from a lack of money, forcing it to use its resources creatively.
To reach more people in the community, some AIDS educational programs operate out of a beauty shop.
The owner hands out AIDS information to all her clients when they enter the shop
and shows videos on AIDS prevention while they wait for their hair to dry.
She also keeps books and other publications around so customers can read them
while waiting for their appointments. It's amazing how many people she has educated on the job.
Recently, the network began helping hair stylists throughout the Southeast
set up similar programs in their shops. They are also valuable resources in spreading
information to their schools, community groups, and churches.
The organization has developed several techniques useful to other groups doing similar work.
While no one way of winning the war against AIDS exists,
the network shares these lessons learned in its battle against AIDS:
Speak to your community in a way they can hear. Many communities have a low literacy rate,
making impossible passing out AIDS literature and expecting people to read it.
To solve this problem, ask people in the community who can draw well to
create low-literacy AIDS education publications.
These books use simple, hand-drawn pictures of "sad faces" and "happy faces"
to illustrate ways people can prevent AIDS.
They also show people who look like those we need to educate, since people can relate more
when they see familiar faces and language they can understand.
As a result, such books a ctually have more effect in the communities
where they are used than government publications, which cost thousands of dollars more to produce.
Train teenagers to educate their peers.
Because AIDS is spreading fastest among teenagers in the rural South,
the stylists have established an "AIDS Busters" program which trains youth from 8 to 26 to
go into the community and teach "AIDS 101" to their peers.
They make it simple and explain the risk of catching AIDS to friends
their own age much better than an adult can. They also play a vital role
in helping parents understand the types of peer pressure their children experience.
Redefine "at risk" to include women from different backgrounds and marriage status.
One woman's doctor told her she was not at risk for AIDS because she was married
and didn't use drugs. Such misinformation plagues the medical establishment.
According to the Centers for Disease Control,
women will soon make up 80 percent of those diagnosed with HIV.
The stylists also emphasize that everyone is at risk and
that all of us have a right to protect ourselves - regardless of marriage status.
These lessons are not the only solutions to the crisis but until there is a cure for AIDS,
education represents the only safe measure to guard against the virus.
Like no other plague before, the AIDS epidemic threatens to
wipe out an entire generation and leave another without parents.
We must not let cultural, racial, or social barriers distract us from the job that must be done.
Nor can we let political inefficiency stop us from our task.
This is an undeclared war that everyone must sign up for in order for us to win.
We simply cannot let people continue to die because we don't feel comfortable talking about AIDS.
Everyone must become an educator and learn to live.