News
Student groups are working to alert the campus to the alarming rates of HIV infection in the black community as part of a national campaign that began last Friday with National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.
Volunteers distributed informational pamphlets and condoms at Collis on Friday to passersby, many of whom were apparently unaware of the AIDS epidemic that has come to be the leading cause of death for black males between 25 and 44 years old.
"People don't know that this is a great problem in the black community," Aritetsoma Ukueberuwa '04, leader of the Student Global AIDS Campaign, one of two organizations behind the push to inform the Dartmouth community, said.
Regarded as a risk solely for the gay and white community in the early 1980s, HIV and AIDS infection among blacks has continued to mushroom in past years even as overall rates have leveled off.
Although blacks constitute 12 percent of the total population, they accounted for half of all new HIV cases reported in 2001, according to the Center for Disease Control.
35 percent of all AIDS patients have been African-American, and by the end of 2001 more than 168,000 African-Americans had died from AIDS.
While the national campaign focused on 16 cities where AIDS concerns are most pressing, the Student Global AIDS Campaign and Concerned Black Students, an appendage of the Afro-American Society, will continue to bring the the message to Dartmouth throughout this week.
CBS will hold a discussion on AIDS in the black community on Thursday, and the SGAC will send a pamphlet to all black students on campus by the end of the week.
"AIDS I think in the global community affects the poverty-stricken areas, so students at Dartmouth might feel removed from that," Ukueberuwa said.
Race and ethnicity alone are not risk factors for infection.
