USAC-sponsored World AIDS Day event stresses protection against, awareness of HIV infection
Students speak with a representative from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in Bruin Plaza during AIDS Awareness Day on Wednesday.
By alexander moskowitz
Nov. 17, 2011 2:16 a.m.
A van parked in Bruin Plaza allowed for quick-stop HIV testing, and student volunteers handed out free condoms as part of a World AIDS Day event on campus Wednesday.
The annual outreach effort aims to educate people about preventing HIV infection.
The theme for this year’s event, put on by the Undergraduate Students Association Council, was “Gifts Should Come Wrapped” ““ a play on words referring to the holiday season and the use of contraceptives.
Students received free condoms and HIV testing to encourage safe sex and spot HIV before it has a chance to spread. Live music and speakers complemented the activities.
Tamir Sholklapper, USAC Student Welfare commissioner, said his biggest goal was to make students understand that anyone can be infected with HIV, even if there are no visible symptoms.
Nearly one in five Americans infected with HIV do not know they are infected, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The highest rates of HIV infections are among 16- to 25-year-olds, which includes the majority of UCLA’s student population, said Dr. Emery Chang, a UCLA physician who specializes in infectious disease.
“Getting regularly tested, asking questions about partners (or) getting tested together would be a good way to understand where everybody is,” Chang said. “It’s recommended that everybody have an HIV test at least annually.”
Although HIV medication has improved in quality and has increased the length of patients’ lives since the discovery of the virus in 1981, the medication is expensive and a cure still does not exist, Chang said.
Event organizers incentivized HIV testing by offering students raffle tickets to win a Kaplan course.
Josephine Flores, a third-year undeclared student, was the last person in line for HIV-testing. Even though she is married and has three kids, Flores said getting tested is still important.
Hillel Wasserman, one of the speakers at the fair, discussed his 23-year battle with AIDS. Wasserman, a 1978 UCLA alumnus, said students should take the preventative measures necessary to avoid a future AIDS epidemic.
Nearly 594,500 people with AIDS in the United States have died since the epidemic began, according to CDC.
“This epidemic is virtually on the … rise again, just as scary as in the earliest of the ’80s,” Wasserman said in his speech.
The best way to avoid contracting HIV is through sexual abstinence, including oral intercourse, but using a condom every time is a close second, Chang said.
