Nancy Blackwell
About every 15 minutes someone in the United States dies from AIDS.
This fact was printed on a T-shirt displayed in Peiffer Lounge yesterday. It was part of an exhibit sponsored by the Student Health Advisory Board (SHAB) at San Diego State University. The exhibit, which recognized World AIDS Day, also featured several panels of the AIDS memorial quilt.
Students will get a final chance to view the quilt panels from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. today in Peiffer Lounge.
Nancy Blackwell, education coordinator of the San Diego chapter of The NAMES Project Foundation and a volunteer at the display yesterday, said the purpose of the event is to “educate people about AIDS and to also let the names not be forgotten.”
“People see these quilt panels and think ‘These are pretty,’ but they don’t know what the (panels) mean. Some people say there is a magic in the quilt. If you understand it, you can’t help but feel it.”
The mission statement of The NAMES Project Foundation is to “illustrate the enormity of the AIDS epidemic by showing the humanity behind the statistics through the AIDS Memorial Quilt.”
Blackwell said the AIDS epidemic should be labeled as a pandemic rather than as an epidemic.
“AIDS is the number one killer for people between the ages of 25 and 44 in the U.S.,” she said. “And teen-agers are one of the fastest increasing groups for becoming (HIV positive).”
HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. One in 250 Americans is infected with HIV, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates more than 13 to 15 million adults were infected with HIV in 1994; another 6,000 people are infected each day. By the year 2000, the cumulative total of HIV infections in men, women and children worldwide will be 30 to 40 million.
According to WHO, women are the fastest growing group of HIV infections worldwide. Three thousand women are infected with HIV each day; 500 women die from AIDS each day.
In the next five years, more than 5 million children will be infected with HIV worldwide.
Blackwell, who is also a high school teacher in North County, said she encourages her students to abstain from sex.
“I tell them abstinence,” she said. “Don’t (have sex). And you won’t be a panel.”
The quilt, which represents 11 percent of all U.S. AIDS deaths, has a total of over 35,000 individual fabric panels, Blackwell said.
She said all of these panels were displayed in Washington, D.C. last month. This number includes the 5,000 new panels added to the quilt this year.
Karen Sugiura, a communicative disorders senior and a member of SHAB, said she hopes the display will influence students to change their lifestyles.
Engineering student Bukola Afolayaa agreed.
“It’s so funny. I’m a student here and I see a lot of sexually active students around here who are not thinking of AIDS,” Afolayaa said. “It would be good if this school had this display up once every month to jog the memories of people.
“People need to care and to recognize this epidemic in society.”
