The rising rate of AIDS among younger people has health educator Leslie Habetler worried.
“Our concern is 60 percent of people in new cases are 18 to 24 (years old),” she said.
Habetler works for HIV Alliance, a not-for-profit agency in Eugene. She thinks part of the reason younger adults are more likely to acquire the disease is because they have a complacent attitude.
“It’s kind of like they think ‘Well, if I get HIV, I can just pop some pills,’” Habetler said. “Young people don’t understand how you can get it or that you can die from it.”
“Youth and AIDS in the 21st Century” is the theme for this Saturday’s World AIDS Day.
Habetler said because of the development of new drugs in the mid-’90s, the number of AIDS-
related deaths has declined in America. The story is not the same for other countries, according to Greg Eicher, who works in the Lane County HIV Testing/Counseling program.
“Outside the U.S.A., people don’t have access to those drugs,” he said. “The number of people dying — in Africa, Central Asia and Russia — is tremendous.”
Eicher said it’s more important than ever that people in high-risk categories get tested for HIV.
“Within any age group, if people have sexually transmitted infections, then they are putting themselves at risk,” Eicher said. “Those STIs compromise the body’s immune system and offer portals for the transmission of (HIV).”
People can go to either the Lane County Public Health Department or HIV Alliance in Eugene for HIV testing. Because of a law in place since October, health services in Oregon have been tracking not only the number of people with AIDS but also the names of those who test positive for HIV. Eicher said that should not deter people from getting tested.
“There has been a lot of concern over the last year about changing to the names reporting,” he said. “But the state requires every county to offer anonymous and confidential testing.”
The Department of Human Services requested the change to have a better sense of the rise and fall of infection in Oregon.
“AIDS cases don’t give us a good idea of what’s happening,” said Dr. Mark Loveless, the medical director of the HIV program for the Oregon health services program.
He said the program needs to have data about HIV before the onset of AIDS.
“We need to know what is happening on the front edge,” he said. “AIDS is the last stage of the disease.”
Lane County reported eight cases of AIDS in 2000.