Black Hollywood Confront AIDS: Celebrities Get Public HIV Tests

In preparation for the 10th anniversary of National HIV Testing Day, Black celebrities and their allies are joining forces Monday, June 25th, at 10:00AM (PST) with Screen Actors Guild (SAG), The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), Artists for a New South Africa and the Black AIDS Institute to raise awareness of the urgent need to stop the spread of HIV in Black communities by getting HIV screenings in front of the cameras at the Guild's headquarters, 5757 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.


The group will announce the "1 in a Million" campaign, a call-to-action for 1 million Black Americans to get screened for HIV by December 1, 2008 (World AIDS Day). AIDS is the leading cause of death for Black women aged 25-34 years, and it is estimated that up to 46% of Black gay men may already be HIV-positive, and according to the CDC, there are over 260,000 people in the U.S. infected with HIV who don't know they are infected.


Celebrities including Jimmy Jean-Louis ("Heroes"), Hill Harper ("CSI New York"), Hosea Chanchez ("The Game"), Anne-Marie Johnson ("CSI," "JAG"), Rockmond Dunbar ("Prison Break," "Heartland"), Vanessa Williams ("Soul Food"), Howard Hesseman ("Boston Legal," "WKRP in Cincinnati"), Henry Simmons ("Shark") and Regina King ("Ray," "24") have agreed to participate in the unprecedented event, being held at the SAG headquarters (5757 Wilshire Boulevard), to illustrate their personal commitments to ending the AIDS epidemic in Black America (Full list of participants below). Black Americans can find testing sites in their local communities by logging on to the web site and entering their zip code.


"AIDS in America today is a Black disease. Nobody wants to talk about that, and nobody wants to own that. That silence is killing us," said Black AIDS Institute Executive Director and Founder Phill Wilson. "That's why we're calling for 1 million Black Americans to get tested for HIV in the next year -- knowing your HIV status can save your life, and every one of us has a responsibility to ourselves and our communities to know our status and to talk with our family members and loved ones about their status."


HIV and AIDS disproportionately affect Black America:


* HIV infection is the leading cause of death for Black women aged 25-34 years.
* In 2005, Blacks accounted for 48% of new HIV infections (in the 33 states where data was available) even though they made up only 13% of the U.S. population.
* The CDC says 65% of the infants who were perinatally infected with HIV in 2006 were Black.
* We account for 50% of AIDS cases diagnosed in the 50 states and the District of Columbia in 2005.
* The rate of AIDS diagnoses for Black adults and adolescents is 10 times the rate for whites and nearly three times the rate for Latinos.
* The rate of AIDS diagnoses for Black women is nearly 24 times the rate for white women. The rate of AIDS diagnoses for Black men was 8 times the rate for white men.


"Actors are blessed with the gift of voice, and people listen to what they say," said SAG President Alan Rosenberg. "Our hope today is that African Americans and others will see what we are doing here, take our message to heart, and take the time to both get tested for HIV and to talk with their families about HIV and AIDS. I congratulate and thank all Screen Actors Guild members and other Black celebrities who took this bold step today by coming to take an HIV test in front of the cameras and the world."
source:www.pnnonline.org