New York
Gives Away Condoms, Offers AIDS Education
to Senior Citizens
The Associated
Press
July
25, 2007
As volunteers served desert
at a senior center in
New York City
, other volunteers were distributing something else to the elderly:
condoms.
"You're giving out
condoms," said Rose Crescenzo, 82, "but who's going to give us a
guy?"
The condom giveaway is part
of an effort by the New York City Department of Aging to educate older
people about the risks they may face of contracting the virus that causes
AIDS. Free HIV testing was offered as well.
AIDS education of the
elderly has become an important issue as antiretroviral drugs keep
patients living longer. Experts warn that ignorance about HIV among
seniors can lead to new infections.
In one case, a doctor from
Howard
University
Hospital
in
Washington
recently diagnosed unsuspected HIV in an 82-year-old.
"Often older people do
not concern themselves with HIV and AIDS because they assume that they are
not at risk, and that can be a tragic mistake," said Edwin
Mendez-Santiago,
New York City
's commissioner of aging.
A study last year by the
AIDS Community Research Initiative of America projected that within the
next decade, the majority of HIV-infected New Yorkers will be over 50.
The group's research found
that many older New Yorkers with HIV are isolated and may not use the
city's network of more than 300 senior centers.
New York City has the most
HIV cases of any U.S. city — nearly 100,000 — and is considered a
leader in the area of AIDS education for seniors, with the City Council
having budgeted $1 million toward HIV education for older people.
But smaller-scale campaigns
are also under way elsewhere.
Nancy Orel, a professor of
gerontology at
Bowling Green
State
University
in
Ohio
, is organizing an October workshop for seniors that will include free
condoms and HIV tests.
"Unfortunately, most
individuals have the perception that sex ends at, what, 32?"
Orel
said. "And many older adults report that when they go to see their
physicians, the physicians don't ask if they're sexually active."
Dorcas Baker, who directs an
AIDS education center in
Baltimore
, said health officials there began HIV prevention programs at senior
centers in 2005.
"We call it the silent
epidemic because no one thinks seniors are sexual or that they're using
drugs," she said.
Dr. Bernard Branson,
associate director for laboratory diagnostics in the Division of HIV/AIDS
Prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said
that people aged 50 to 64 accounted for 14 percent of new HIV diagnoses in
2005, while those over 65 comprised only about 2 percent of HIV diagnoses.
But Branson said doctors
should consider the possibility of HIV at all ages.
At the senior center in New
York, 66-year-old AIDS educator Edward Shaw recounted his own 1988
diagnosis and warned, "If you're still having sex, you need to know
about HIV/AIDS."
Many of the seniors ignored
him. But Marie Tarantino, who gave her age as "39-plus," said
lonely seniors might take unwise risks.
"They might pick
somebody up on the street," she said. "They just think that at a
certain age they can't get pregnant. They don't think they could get a
sexually transmitted disease."
And Crescenzo, who lost her
husband of 62 years last October, did take the condoms.
"If I get a date,"
she said, "I'm going to use one of these."
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