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Cruzileisy Velasquez

Core 116

Professor Yoshino

            How would you feel if during your childhood you would go to your aunt’s house and see a picture of a woman you never met before? Still her memory lives on in that certain house, and as proof of her existence are three children that have no mother or father and whose lives are just as chaotic as that of their dead parents. Well, this was part of my past, I never wondered why this was so, all I did was hear the stories of how this woman slept with many men and how one day around the early  1980’s she became very ill and all of a sudden in about a year or two she died, but no one knew the cause. Research and medicine showed that she had contracted HIV from one of her many sex partners. At this time in my childhood I had no idea what HIV was all I was told was that if was a death sentence, a mark of promiscuity, and of a “dirty” past. By the time I did find out what HIV truly was I was very ashamed that the woman was my cousin and that she would risk passing such a destructive disease to many other people.

            Growing up in the Bronx, New York isn’t the most care free environment to develop from a child into adulthood. It is actually a very risky experience in which every day presents new challenges to overcome. For example, one day you might find a used condom in the playground and as a child you may not notice it, but as a young adult you frown upon those left it there and wonder what STDs the person using it might have had, and if one of those diseases was HIV. My impression regarding the amount of HIV/AIDS in my community, was influenced by such scenarios. I estimated that in my zip code alone (10452) there were a total of 2500 HIV/AIDS cases. The aforementioned events weren’t the only factors that led me to my conclusion; other elements like the amount of people I saw smoking Marijuana in my area and also the amount of women that offered sexual pleasures/worked as prostitutes also led me to believe that my estimate should be conspicuously high for this area.

            In reality, my guess was little high but not that far from the target. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), my zip code 10452 of the Bronx, New York had a total of 2176 AIDS cases out of a total population of 72,138 people. The calculated AIDS rate for this zip code was 3016.440 per 100000 (as shown in Table 1) which is nine times higher than the national rate of the United States (Rate of the U.S: 328 per 100000). This AIDS rate placed my zip code as the 7^th highest AIDS rate in all of the Bronx. Obviously as it can be seen from Table 1 that the borough of the Bronx has an evident problem when it comes to the amount of people infected with AIDS in the community. This data can scare any person living in the Bronx and it makes you wonder why is this occurring? What factors are leading to such incredible numbers? ₍₁₎

Table 1:

Hostos Lincoln Academy (public school) was very open when it came to protecting its student from STIs and STDs, they would publicly announce the distribution of condoms at the start of every semester. They would warn the students of the dangers of unprotected sex and they also showed graphic videos of STIs such as gonorrhea, Chlamydia, genital herpes, and crabs that affected the human reproductive system. They would also tell us of those disease or infections that were curable and those that weren’t, such as HIV, Genital Herpes, and so on. These methods were some of the ways that my school tried to educate their students of the risk that come with sex. They wanted us to know what we were getting into and how we could prevent infection by using condoms or the best way by being abstinent.

In my school it was a requirement to take the class for Health Education at least for one semester before graduating. I on the other hand got the chance to take four semester of a class called Health Occupations Education, that will fulfill that requirement but that also allowed me to study the human body and the pathogens that afflict it daily in a much greater depth.  In this class as I came to experience the many types of Sexually Transmitted Diseases/ Infections that can overcome the human reproductive system. We covered everything from Hepatitis A-E to Gonorrhea, but we only lightly touched on HIV and ways to prevent infection. From this class I got to learn that HIV stands for Human Immunodefiency Virus, that it is transmitted through unprotected sexual intercourse, from blood to blood contact with someone infected with the virus, and through birth (prenatal). I also learned that HIV attacked the white blood cells/ the immune system until eventually the body could no longer fight off the opportunistic infections that attacked the body in its weak state and the victim died from that infection which could have been brought upon by a various pathogens such as Tuberculosis, Influenza and other opportunistic infections.

            As of today, there are limited amounts of ways to transmit or contract HIV, which are known to science. In the beginning of the epidemic (late 1970s to present day) the most common way of infection was through Men having sex with men (MSM). Nowadays, in the Bronx the total infection through MSM is 2558, in my zip code (10452) there is a total of 212 MSM cases which make up 8.28% of the total cases (according to the New York State Public Health, Table 2). This is an alarming rate especially in an area where all I see is men who are very homophobic. Yet, MSM is becoming part of a normal lifestyle for some and this is causing people to show “lewd” behavior on the subway lines. For example as addressed in the Daily News article, titled: “Sexcapade in the Subway Fordham Road Station Gay-Encounter Hot Spot”, men are having sexual encounters in train stations and they have a website telling users where and when they could meet other men.    _{(2, 3)}

            IDU or Intravenous Drug Use is another form of infection that is affecting both the male and female population of the Bronx, N.Y. In my zip code alone there are a total of 285 male IDU infections and 133 female IDU infections. These amounts of infections due to IDU do not surprise me as a resident of the area; I have witness people who can barely stand up or seem to almost touch the floor but always manage to keep themselves up due to being “high”. IDU infections occur when drug users share syringes to get drugs in their systems and someone who is infected passes it on to another person. This issued is being addressed in Staten Island where free syringes are being facilitated to drug users. A similar movement was started in1992 in the Bronx, in which nine centers for syringe exchange were open to the public drug users, this allowed for a drop in infections transmitted through needle sharing “to a little more than 15%” from the actual 50% in 1992. _{(2, 4, 5)}

            The third way of infection in my area and in the world is through Heterosexual sex, which means men and women infecting each other through sexual intercourse. The numbers of infections diagnosed in 10452 through December 2004 was 126 males and 222 females. ₍₂₎

Table 2:

• Graph from the New York City Department of Health.

As seen in Table 3 the cumulative HIV/AIDS diagnoses from January 2001 thru December 2004 don’t show much prospect in avoiding infection for my zip code; whose cumulative diagnoses is an astonishing 345 people, if divided between those three years the total amount of people being infected per year were a large total of 115 people. These numbers don’t show much progress and tells me that we need to try harder to improve disease awareness and prevention methods. ₍₆₎

Table 3:

          Now I ask myself: Why is it that the vast majority of people being affected by HIV and AIDS in the Bronx are Blacks and Hispanics? Does this differentiation have to do with economic resources? Does it have to do with Public resources? Does the lack of classes on sexual education in both public and catholic schools have to do with this? Can this graph help decipher the reasons as to why the white majority population is healthier than the minority groups? Are doctors at fault here? And finally what can we do about it?

Work Cited

1.)    “Cumulative AIDS Diagnose, January 1, 1981-December 31, 2005” New York City Department

2.)    “N.Y.C. PLWHA at the end of December 2004: Borough and Zip Code of Residence” New York City Department

3.)    Donohue, Pete “Sexcapade in the Subway Fordham Road Station Gay-Encounter Hot Spot” Daily News. August 16^th, 2005. Suburban; Pg. 1

4.)    Schneider, Lisa “Thousands of free syringes given to drug users” Staten Island Advance. July 10^th, 2007. Health, pg. A05

5.)    Staples, Brent “How Needle Exchange Programs Fight the AIDS Epidemic” The New York Times. October 25, 2004. Section A; Column 1; Editorial Desk; Editorial Observer; Pg. 20

6.)    “ N.Y.C. Cumulative HIV Diagnoses (with and without AIDS) by Borough and Zip Code (January 2001 thru December 2004)” New York City Department