Collegiate Times

Virginia Tech is helping the fight against AIDS by celebrating AIDS Awareness Week.

AIDS Awareness Week is a worldwide campaign held every year in the last week of November. Traditionally, the events are incorporated around World AIDS Day, which is celebrated internationally on Dec. 1. The combination of these two establishments hreflect the important effort to raise AIDS awareness and public awareness for HIV, as well as to recognize the impact these diseases have on everyone.

Today, over forty million people are living with HIV throughout the world, a number that is steadily increasing every day.

While most people know the words AIDS or HIV, many don’t know how the two interact. HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus, and it is the virus that causes AIDS- Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. HIV attacks CD4 cells in the immune system. When the immune system loses too many CD4 cells, that person’s ability to fight off infection is decreased, and they are at risk of developing opportunistic infections. A person is diagnosed with AIDS the individual has less than 200 CD4 cells, and or one of 21 AIDS-defining opportunist infections.

This year’s international campaign theme is called "HIV/AIDS- Lets Talk About It. Many Faces, Different Stories," while the campaign at Tech is operating under a unity theme.

"If we get the message out to one person, we’re getting it out to everyone," said Alicia Oestreich, a fifth year Radford University student majoring in Anthropology and Foreign Languages/Literature, and the AIDS Awareness Week chair.

The events at Tech are hosted by the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Alliance and this is the fourth year the organization has been sponsoring the campaign.

"The goal is to bring about awareness of AIDS to the college campus," said Liz Ford, a fifth year interdisciplinary studies and art double major and the president of the LGBTA at Tech. "We want to educate people so they can’t plead ignorance."

"There are a lot of misconceptions out there about AIDS that need to be taken care of," said Oestreich.

"In the United States, the proportion of AIDS cases among women more than tripled from seven percent in 1985 to 25 percent in 2001. African-American and Hispanic women represent over 80 percent of AIDS cases reported among American women," according to The Well Project.

This is one of the many reasons why it is so important to spread AIDS awareness through campaigns like the annual AIDS Awareness Week.

The main focus of the international campaigns is to raise money for people living with HIV or AIDS by selling red ribbons, but this year, Tech’s AIDS Awareness Week is taking a new approach.

While Oestreich revealed that Club Red Ribbon is the biggest event, this week’s campaign is raising money through donations for the Whitman Walker AIDS Clinic.

"Because we’ve never done this before, we have no idea what the reaction will be," Ford said. "But even a couple hundred dollars will go a long way for the clinic."

So far, the campaign has been a success, and the members of LGBTA hope that their efforts will help spread the message AIDS Awareness Week is trying to spread.

"This is only my first year volunteering," said junior art major Feather Cole. "When I heard about it from Liz, I thought I was a really good idea and now I hope that it will continue to grow every year."