Jacksonville kicked off a week’s worth of activities honoring World AIDS Day with an opening event Monday at the University of Florida College of Medicine-Jacksonville.
Action News anchor Paige Kelton and Jacksonville Jaguars running back Rashad Jennings were among the speakers, along with HIV and AIDS patients fighting the disease.
The UF Center for HIV/AIDS Research, Education and Service (UF CARES) sponsored the kickoff event and always plays a major role in the week’s activities, executive director Melissa Scites said.
Jacksonville is one of only three cities in the nation that has declared the entire week “World AIDS Week,” Scites said. The week is tied to World AIDS Day on Thursday.
Other events include the opening of the World AIDS Quilt at noon Thursday at Jacksonville City Hall, a community awards luncheon on Friday and an awareness workshop Saturday.
A weeklong series of events helps raise the awareness of the disease, Scites said, and draws attention to free HIV/AIDS testing that is available at UF CARES/Shands Jacksonville.
“It is a disease that is manageable and we need to dispel the myths associated with it,” Scites said. “It shouldn’t be an environment where people are ostracized and stigmatized – even in their own family at times.”
Scites, a nurse by trade, has been working with UF CARES for 13 years and has seen phenomenal advancements in treatment and prevention of the disease.
The transmission rate from HIV-positive mothers to their children used to be 25 percent in the 1990s, Scites said. Now, with advances in perinatal prevention and treatment, it is less than 2 percent, Scites said, and doesn’t even have to be that high.
“It’s devastating when we find a child who’s infected because it is so preventable,” Scites said.
For more information on World AIDS Day and activities across the country, visit www.aids.gov.