Raising Awareness

On the heels of World AIDS Day this December 1, here’s information on another AIDS awareness effort.

February 7th is recognized annually as the National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (NBHAAD) - a nation-wide community mobilization initiative that leads to capacity building to increase awareness, participation, and support for HIV prevention among African Americans.

The goal of NBHAAD is to motivate Black Americans at risk for HIV to get educated and tested, and to get HIV/AIDS stakeholders involved in prevention education programs, HIV testing, press conferences, community forums and other activities to raise awareness, participation and support for HIV prevention among Black Americans.

Since 2001, federal, state, and local governmental agencies, community-based organizations, AIDS service organizations, public and private partners in prevention, treatment and care, as well as partners in the business, entertainment, and faith communities have all joined together in support of National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

In other AIDS news, two major U.S. cities have reported a recent jump in the number of false-positive results from the OraQuick oral HIV test. Although the rapid oral test is usually 99 percent accurate, public health officials from San Francisco and New York City both say that, lately, the accuracy rate has been quite a bit lower. In response to these reports, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that all positive results from a rapid oral test be immediately confirmed with a rapid blood test, which has had no reported accuracy problems. There have been no complaints of false-negative test results from the oral test.