NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) –– Bounce to Zero, a Ryan White Services and Resources campaign under the New Orleans Health Department, marks its first anniversary in combating HIV in the city. Despite progress, the group acknowledges ongoing challenges in accessing care.
The campaign aims to raise awareness about HIV prevention, testing and treatment in New Orleans.
AIDS, often confused with HIV, was first recognized in the U.S. in 1981. Since then, it has resulted in over 700,000 deaths.
In the early years, AIDS was widely associated with gay men, and it wasn’t yet known how it spread. Those living with HIV and members of the LGBTQ+ communities were stigmatized, often fired from their jobs, or outcasted out of fear they could spread the virus.
In 1984, Dr. Robert Gallo and his team at the National Cancer Institute identified the cause of AIDS, a retrovirus initially named HTLV-III, now known as HIV. The virus attacks the immune system, weakening the body’s defense against other infections and diseases. It is primarily transmitted through unprotected sex or shared injection drug equipment.
AIDS is a late stage of HIV. It happens when the virus severely damages the body’s immune system. Luckily, with modern medicine, most people with HIV will not develop AIDS.
New HIV infections have dropped by 73% between 1984 and 2019. While advances in medicine and awareness have helped, an estimated 38,000 Americans are diagnosed with HIV each year. New Orleans and Baton Rouge rank 5th and 6th among other states in new infections.
In 1987, at 18-years-old, Bounce to Zero ambassador Jim Berman attempted to join the Navy to turn his life around after he ran away from home at 16. The Navy began testing for the virus two years prior. Berman said he completed the physicals, but his path was cut short. “I was later called into the Admiral’s office and was told I was unfit to serve in the Navy because I would be dead in two years because I had HIV,” he explained.
So little was known about HIV at the time, Berman explained, “you just lived your life with this internal secret, which you couldn’t share.” It was that isolation that he said deterred people from getting treatment, “that’s why breaking stigma with HIV is so important.”
Another ambassador of Bounce to Zero, James Lewis, said people living with HIV “face stigma from home, with family members not having the information and education to know that person in their family is not a threat to them.”
According to Lewis, some of this stigma to long-held beliefs, especially within minority communities, “we’re in the Bible Belt, so a lot of people, especially African American people, come from religious backgrounds.” The old idea that HIV solely affects the LGBTQ+ community often keeps new information at bay.
Lewis works with the Tulane Total Health Clinic to combat stigma by sharing his story with his clients and providing a range of services, including PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), PEP (post-exposure prophylaxis) and antiretroviral therapy (ART).
PrEP is a medicine you can take to prevent getting HIV from sex or injection drug use. PrEP can stop HIV from taking hold and spreading throughout your body.
PEP is an emergency medication you can take after possible exposure to HIV. The medication can stop HIV from taking hold and spreading throughout your body as long as it is taken within 72 hours of exposure.
But there is also medication now for people with HIV, called antiretroviral therapy (ART) to help stop the spread. ART has evolved from multiple pills to a single daily pill or a bi-monthly injectable option. The goal is to achieve an undetectable viral load, making it impossible to transmit the virus through sex (Undetectable = untransmittable or U=U).
U=U allows people with HIV to live lives not previously available to them. “Because of that, I have a wife, and I have a 9-year-old son, and an 11-year-old daughter. They’re all negative, and they were all just conceived in the average ways,” Berman said.
The life expectancy for those with HIV has skyrocketed from a few months to now living into their 70s and 80s. Physician Dr. Paula Seal said, “As long as they come to their appointments and take their medicine consistently, they can anticipate having a very full life.” But longevity is not guaranteed, “the key is getting diagnosed early and into care early and on treatment,” she explained.
The Bounce to Zero campaign promotes early diagnosis and connects people to resources, including free at-home HIV tests and a hub for HIV-related information. For free tests or counseling, you can call (504)-884-3307 or visit the Bounce to Zero website.
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