Rally This Wednesday for AIDS Awareness

Posted on03 May 2011. Tags: aids, CARC, Hartford

C1-70×70.jpg” alt=”" width=”70″ height=”70″ />(Hartford) AIDS Awareness Day

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Hundreds of people with HIV/AIDS

will be converging on the state capitol for a rally and to meet with their legislators on Wednesday, May 11th at 10 AM for the 11th Annual AIDS Awareness Day sponsored by the CT AIDS Resource Coalition (CARC). A number of public officials are expected to attend the rally including Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman, Comptroller Kevin Lembo and Deputy Secretary of OPM, Mark Ojakian. Speakers will include Shawn M. Lang and Leif Mitchell, co-chairs of the AIDS LIFE Campaign, Connecticut’s statewide AIDS policy group, as well as people living with HIV/AIDS, and poet-activist-educator Fredrick Douglass Knowles who will inspire the crowd with his very personal experience with HIV and his energetic style with the spoken word. Participants will be wearing provocative red T-shirts asking “HIV+? Get tested!” in order to raise awareness about the epidemic in our state and to spark discussion on the importance of getting tested for HIV in order to know your own HIV status. “If you haven’t been tested for HIV, then you don’t know your status and you could unknowingly be infecting others with HIV,” said John P. Merz, Executive Director of CARC. Nationally, someone is infected with HIV every 9 ½ minutes, and it is estimated that 25% of all those living with HIV don’t know it. The CT Department of Public Health 2006 HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report estimates that there are nearly 19,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in the state; yet only 10,574 people with HIV/AIDS have been reported and are in the state’s HIV/AIDS registry. Advocates are rallying to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS in our state and urging legislators to hold the line on AIDS funding. “Over the past decade, the number of people living with HIV/AIDS has doubled, yet funding has never kept pace.” said Shawn M Lang, Director of Public Policy for CARC. Lang went on to say, “We are painfully aware of the realities of the budget and believe we can live with the cuts to AIDS lines. We are here to thank the

Governor and legislators who voted for the negotiated budget.”

Fore more info, please visit: http://www.ctaidscoalition.org/