hydeia_blog

I’ve been living with HIV and AIDS for 25 years. There came a point when I decided I wanted to do something to help people of all ages learn about HIV and how not to contract it. So I joined the fight with other activists to try and reach as many people as possible.

I’ve been speaking on this topic since age five, and been all over the world trying to educate people. But guess what? The rate of infection is not going down.  I just don’t understand. Somewhere we went wrong. Is the government to blame? Or just us as humans, who act like HIV is something that won’t happen to us?  It seems to be everyone else’s problem until it hits home.

Could it be because we really don’t talk about it anymore?  The media is part of the problem. The only time you really hear anything about HIV/AIDS is on December 1st World AIDS Day. Well it must be nice to only think about it once a year. I wish I could do that.

We know the media can be informative so why skip over this issue? Could it be because there is almost no REAL sex education in schools anymore because we’d rather “PRETEND” children are not having sex? Even though the numbers of teen pregnancies are rising before our very eyes?

Maybe it’s the medication – people feel if they become infected they can just pop a pill! Yes the medicine works wonders but it also costs a lot. And the side effects are sometimes hard to deal with. What will it take for us to get through to everyone to practice safe sex?

“Stay HIV/AIDS negative”

This is a guest post by Hydeia Broadbent.

About Hydeia: At birth, Hydeia Broadbent was abandoned at the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas where Patricia and Loren Broadbent adopted her as an infant. Although her HIV condition was congenital, she was not diagnosed as HIV-positive with advancement to AIDS until age three. The prognosis was that she would not live past the age of five and as a result became the “test baby” for HIV/AIDS medications, which are currently on the market today. Needless to say, this “test baby” has defied the odds by more than16 years, which is valid proof that HIV/AIDS is no longer a death sentence. -MTV

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIe_55jpZlI[/youtube]

Follow Hydeia on Twitter: Twitter.com/HydeiaBroadbent

www.RAPONAIDS.com