AIDS Article

The article is written by a gay man, who lost his first partner to acquired immune deficiency syndrome and dedicated himself to spreading information about human immunodeficiency virus prevention and campaigning for governmental attention to the hassle in order to save other gay and bisexual men from losing the ones they love (Williams, 2006, para. 6).Clark Williams also served as the interim executive director of the Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center at the moment of the articles release and as a manager of countys HIV prevention, hash out, and testing initiatves in 2001-2003.The article reports the LGBT confederacy of Santa Clara County joining other concerned citizens at a meeting where the countys Board of Supervisors Chair promised to tie additional financial resources to strengthen public health system in the face of accelerating rate of HIV transmission.The focus of the effort should be prevention and early diagnosis. The article recalls the start of HIV/AIDS pestifero us that was first go steadyed as a rare form of cancer endangering gay and bisexual male sweet Yorkers. In 2006, the number of Americans who died from AIDS reached 550,000 and continued to grow. Approximately 40,000 citizens are getting infected with HIV every(prenominal) year.Santa Clara County, for its part, has lost 2,000 residents to the disease. More than 2,500 were living with HIV/AIDS this number might have been considerably higher(prenominal) because one in three citizens having HIV remains undiagnosed. 80 percent of new infections with the virus in Santa Clara County were among gay and bisexual males.Santa Clara County is reported as being near the heart of our nations HIV/AIDS pestilent (Williams, 2006, para. 5). Apart from focusing on the human tragedy of living with HIV diagnosis or loosing a friend, a family member, a colleague, or a neighbor to the disease, the article discusses the problem of HIV/AIDS through with(predicate) the prism of financial burden on the c ountys social security system.Lifetime cost of HIV word is estimated to be as high as $155,000 per patient. These costs are much higher if the disease is not diagnosed at early stages, which is often the case in Santa Clara County, where patients learn about their HIV status in an emergency room.However, the author notes several positive developments in the field of public health, such as pretend reduction counseling to people living with HIV/AIDS and public HIV test counseling locations. Santa Clara County is compared with San Francisco, where HIV test counseling facilities are abundant. In Santa Clara County, there is only one public testing facility, despite the fact that the number of LGBT is over 100,000 in the area.The Billy DeFrank LGBT Community Center is deemed as the just about appropriate place to establish another full-time test counseling facility, since it is known for its excellence in providing HIV prevention to at-risk population.One additional testing facility w ill not solve the problem in the county. It is not only LGBT population that is especially affected by the spread of HIV/AIDS. Other unguarded groups include ethnic minorities, homeless and runaway youth, and drug addicts. Therefore, five part-time testing centers should be loose across Santa Clara County.One of the main strengths of the article is the fact that it is written from an insiders perspective. Rapport between the author and readers is at once established when Clark Williams shares his personal tragedy of loosing his loved once to AIDS.However, emotional pathos is not the main office of the writers credibility Williams is a leader of Santa Clara Countys LGBT community, knowledgeable of the actual Status Quo with regard to HIV/AIDS prevention and counseling.