Home First Encounters High S

Home First Encounters High School Education Guesses Statistics

As stated by the Department of Health in Pennsylvania, these 420 cases among Black individuals in the Lehigh, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, and Northampton counties account for cumulative average of 951.99 per 100,000 and a cumulative rate of 855.57 per 100,000 among the Hispanic community. The spread of this epidemic among the Black and Hispanic community has been addressed in a recent edition of the Reading Eagle published in March of 2007, a newspaper based out of Berks County. Adam Wilson stated that “state figures show that the Latino death rate for Aids –related illnesses is nine times higher than it is for whites” illustrating that the media is recognizing the spread of Aids epidemic among citizens in Pennsylvania. Although this particular article was also dedicated to the spread of all diseases including diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure among the Latino community, the article does acknowledge the health crisis facing the Hispanic citizens of Pennsylvania and the detrimental effects of ignoring this outbreak. The local newspapers This local newspapers also provided the spread of AIDS awareness through organizations such as the Rainbow Room. The Rainbow Room is a local organization in Doylestown that allows “speakers [to come in to] talk to the youths about matters of interest in to the gay community: legal rights, drug use, depression, and HIV prevention”. This topic of AIDS among the gay community is an pertinent subject, I believe, due to the fact that 591 cases or 26% of AIDS within the Lehigh, Carbon, Berks, Bucks, and Northampton counties is from homosexual sexual contact as reported by the Department of Health in Pennsylvania. These forms of humanitarian projects are used in order to decimate the AIDS epidemic within the counties of Pennsylvania.

Although the article mentioned in the above paragraph does address the issue of AIDS within the Hispanic community in Berks County, the majority of the articles I could find on Lexis Nexis were based on AIDS in other countries. After searching Lexis Nexis for articles in HIV in Pennsylvania, I observed that the only time the AIDS epidemic was covered in the newspaper was in order to promote humanitarian projects. One article in particular was on a Pennsylvanian doctor, who is traveling to Africa in order to eradicate the AIDS epidemic. As an article in the opinion section of the Morning Call published in May of 2007 stated,

“The mission statement of Moravian College states that a Moravian education prepares men and women for advance study and continuous learning, individual achievement, and leadership and service for the common good. Two individuals, Drs. William S. Hoffman and Margaret A. Kraybill, exemplify those ideals and have done so with energy, enthusiasm and spirit of goodwill that is not often seen. Upon their retirement as practicing physicians at St. Luke’s Hospital in Fountain Hill, this couple volunteered their time and talents to benefit medical work being done in Tanzania, East Africa”.

Although the media did portray a humanitarian story on the good nature of two retiring physicians, it is my opinion that the Morning Call seem to suggest that the AIDS epidemic did not exist within the borders of Pennsylvania. These physicians had to remove themselves from Pennsylvania in order to be effective against the AIDS epidemic. Sadly, in the few articles I found on the AIDS epidemic within the Morning Call, the publishers never addressed the rising rates of AIDS within Pennsylvania or the nation.