Positive News For Positives!

Positive News For Positives!

“It’s about time!” said Patty Puline, HIV/AIDS educator from Erie, Pa, who has fought the fight for the past ten years. Yes, the stigma associated with HIV entry ban into the United States, denying entry to HIV positive people for years, has now been finally lifted. “We realize that this is just one step, but a very important step. It shouts to the world that the United States realizes that this law was antiquated, and should have been repealed years ago.”

The fact that this ban has been lifted allows the United States to become eligible to host the next International AIDS Conference. Patty Puline and Dr. Reza Nassiri have both been at the forefront in the education campaign to bring HIV/AIDS education to students in Erie, PA. For more than ten years, along with health educators such as Michelee Curtze and Melissa Montero, they struggled to teach this to more than 38 schools in our area. Sadly, the federal administration saw fit to cut educational funding to agencies, health departments, and private groups who used to teach about HIV to high school and college age students in American schools. Despite the fact that 50% of all new HIV infection occurs among ages 15-24, they moved from primary to secondary prevention.

Primary prevention is when I talk to groups of people who are NOT infected, and explain the history, biology, and mechanics of transmission to prevent those people from becoming infected. The funding for that type of education was precious, and went a long way in reducing the amount of new HIV infection in the US.

Secondary prevention is when I work with people who are already HIV positive, or have a diagnosis of AIDS, and enlist their support to be allies in the process of preventing the spread of HIV through their own contacts and prior or previous partners. This was the birth of the DEBI interventions, Diffused Effective Behavioral Interventions. In other words, tried and true, scientific based and evidence based programs. Having been trained in the DEBI interventions, I will be the first to say that they are good when you have support of the community. But I think we still need to have primary prevention as well. This is just simple logic.

It is encouraging with this lifting of the ban on positives, to hope that HIV education funding, primary prevention, may be reinstated soon. We can only hope.

Yours in the fight,

Patty Puline, HIV/AIDS Educator

Member, Centers for Disease Control HIV/STD Educator Trainer Network Member, US Department of Justice, HIV Consultant Member, Senior Adviser, Teen AIDS Peer Corps, Harvard University International AIDS Conference Abstract/Presenter 2002-2004-2006-2008

Statement by Secretary Kathleen G. Sebelius on the Repeal of the HIV Entry Ban

November 2–Today, we will publish a rule in the Federal Register announcing that the United States will drop HIV from the list of diseases barring visitors from entering this country, effective Jan. 4, 2010.

Though the United States has been a leader worldwide when it comes to ending the stigma of HIV/AIDS, we’ve been one of only 12 countries who, by their policies, still enable the myth that HIV/AIDS is a threat. Lifting the HIV “entry ban” represents the same blow against stigma that Ryan White himself fought for from the time he was 13 years old and contracted HIV/AIDS.

It’s appropriate that the nation is taking the final step to lift the entry ban as President Obama signs the fourth reauthorization of the Ryan White CARE Act. The ability to travel freely and have access to affordable health care should be available to everyone. This change has been a long time coming, and I am pleased it is happening now.