Fear stops testing, speaker says

Cryptosporidium shouldn’t scare most people, but for a person with AIDS, it can kill.

The… Cryptosporidium shouldn’t scare most people, but for a person with AIDS, it can kill.

The relatively weak, though nasty, illness affects the stomach and causes as many as 30 uncontrollable bowel movements a day. A healthy immune system can knock it out with ease, but it can prove fatal to someone with AIDS.

Dr. Tony Silvestre, of Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health, discussed the myriad of health problems associated with AIDS and the importance of regular testing at a Rainbow Alliance-sponsored lecture Wednesday night.

“I want people to avoid HIV, get tested, and take the [medicine] you need, so in five years, you don’t have an immune system that’s shot to hell,” he said.

Since the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic at the beginning of the 1980s, 2,760 people in Allegheny County have been diagnosed with the disease. To give students a perspective of how widespread the problem really is, Silvestre said that number, multiplied by seven, gives a ballpark figure of the unreported cases.

Matthew Moyer, director of the Youth Empowerment Program, a division of the Pitt Men’s Study that focuses on HIV outreach, conducted a survey of Oakland residents between the ages of 13 and 25. When asked why they had never been tested for AIDS, 80 percent of respondents who qualified as “high risk,” having had unprotected sex with two or more partners in the last six months, did not get tested out of fear of testing positive.

Testing is important, Silvestre said, because there are drugs on the market that can significantly slow the viral process. These drugs, such as Viramune and Zerit, work by keeping the virus from maturing inside healthy T-cells, the foot soldiers of a healthy immune system.

These pills must be taken in combination with other drugs, creating what Silvestre called the “AIDS cocktail,” in order to be effective. Some pills need to be refrigerated, and others must be taken on a full stomach. These drugs can cost as much as $3,000 for a month’s supply, Silvestre said.

“The point is, it’s difficult to maintain these drugs,” he said. “These pills help; they save lives, but they are not the answer.”

Silvestre went on to say that transmission of the virus through sexual intercourse is easily preventable by the use of latex condoms. There have been efforts by Allegheny General Hospital to start a legal needle exchange program to curb infection through injected drugs, like heroin, he added.

The most effective way of dealing with the AIDS crisis is through education, Silvestre said. He criticized the Pennsylvania Department of Education for inserting language into the HIV curriculum regulations that suggests schools should “omit explicit instruction regarding the specific methods of transmission when teaching students under the age of 13.” The draft also advises teaching abstinence as the preferred means of AIDS prevention, he said.

“We know, in Pennsylvania, there are 500 kids between the ages of 10 and 14 who are pregnant and have babies,” he said. “We know, nationally, that about 7 percent of students indicate that they have had sexual intercourse by the time they’re 13.”

Silvestre encouraged those in attendance to write to Gov. Ed Rendell and “let him know how you feel about that.”