Rebecca Herman, troubled by the high rates of HIV infection in Durham, looked for ways to raise AIDS awareness on campus when she came to Duke as a freshman. Unable to find any AIDS awareness groups already existing at the University, she put up flyers and started her own group—called Generation HIV—during her sophomore year.
“I think that the complexities behind why [HIV] continues to spread are worth addressing as a community,” said Herman, now a senior and current co-president of Generation HIV.
The mission of Generation HIV is to raise campus awareness about HIV and AIDS both in Durham and internationally and to provide a space for interested students to become involved in HIV/AIDS-related service, fundraising and political lobbying.
“AIDS is a disease that points out all the problems in society that people don’t want to deal with—like poverty and race,” said Chelsea Friauf-Evans, co-president of Generation HIV.
Friauf-Evans pointed to the fact that the South is the only region in the country where infection numbers are still increasing. Especially at certain college campuses, infection rates are high among African American women, she said.
In the past, Generation HIV has collaborated with local AIDS organizations in Durham. This year, they focused on a informational campaign to mark World AIDS Day by posting over 500 flyers around campus with different facts and statistics about HIV and AIDS in the U.S. and worldwide.
“This year, the focus was on getting the message out on what the epidemic is—what that means and the impact of disease,” Friauf-Evans said.
While Duke was full of reminders of the World AIDS Day, the international day of commemoration received only sparse coverage in the national media—also a stark contrast to coverage in the United Kingdom, where the Day began.
“On the way driving to Duke, there was a half-hour special on the BBC radio. It certainly doesn’t get enough attention in United States—there’s very little in the American press,” said Sheryl Broverman, assistant professor of the practice of biology. “We don’t have a very international [focused] community and we see this as a problem of others.”
Several students in Broverman’s course Aids and Other Emerging Diseases commemorated World AIDS Day by working with World AIDS Day planners in Durham to organize local events such as a candlelight vigil and presentations by HIV positive people.
The aim of World AIDS Day is to bring attention to the worldwide challenges and consequences of the epidemic—whose rapid infection rate kills five people every minute—in order to create change. The first international AIDS day was started following a summit of health ministers in London in 1988 who realized that a united global effort was required to halt the spread of HIV and AIDS.
The importance of World AIDS Day was echoed by many AIDS researchers at Duke University Medical Center.
“I think it’s important to have World AIDS Day to heighten awareness. It’s a major problem and we need to be constantly reminded of that,” said David Montefiori, director of the Laboratory for AIDS Vaccine Research and Development “We can’t let up for a minute in our effort to conquer this disease.”
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