Coffee shops to inform on World AIDS Day

On Tuesday, people who buy their favorite drink at Strictly Organic Coffee, Thump Coffee and Mocha Jane's will see an unfamiliar sticker on their coffee cups and sleeves. “In 2009, one-third of new HIV cases reported in Deschutes County had progressed to AIDS at the time of infection diagnosis,” the sticker reads.

Tuesday is World AIDS Day, and Deschutes County's HIV and hepatitis C prevention coordinator, Tuesday Johnson, is hoping that along with a jolt of caffeine, coffee drinkers will be reminded that local residents are still living with the disease, and more people continue to become infected with HIV.

So far in 2009, there have been nine new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in Deschutes County, which is higher than in recent years, when there were three or four new cases annually, according to the county. This is the county's first effort to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS with coffee cups, and county health workers said the virus still carries a stigma in Central Oregon and other rural areas.

“The stigma is a huge issue, the stigma about a disease in a rural area where people aren't informed on the real risks of the disease and how it's spread,” said Susan McCreedy, the HIV Ryan White case manager for Deschutes County.

The federal Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program provides funding for primary medical care and support services for people living with HIV and AIDS.

McCreedy said she works with an average of 60 clients, and most of them keep their HIV-positive or AIDS diagnosis secret. The stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS causes some people not to get tested for HIV because they fear being identified as gay or a drug user, and some HIV-positive people do not tell their sexual partners about their diagnosis, McCreedy said.

“One in five people with HIV/AIDS in the U.S. doesn't know they're infected,” McCreedy said. “Three of (the nine new cases this year) already had full-blown AIDS, which means they'd been infected for a long time, from three to five years.”

People can contract HIV through unprotected sex with an infected partner, shared drug paraphernalia such as needles and, in rare cases, through health care, McCreedy said. HIV-positive mothers also can pass the virus to their babies.

The majority of HIV and AIDS cases in Deschutes County involve men who have sex with men, who might not necessarily identify themselves as gay, and people who used intravenous drugs at some point, she said. Women account for about 17 percent of McCreedy's caseload.

McCreedy said the people whose cases she manages need financial assistance to pay for treatment. Some HIV and AIDS patients can pay for treatment in the beginning, but with prescription costs of $2,000 to $3,000 a month, many eventually need help. More patients in Deschutes County have sought help during the recession, McCreedy said.

Johnson printed about 360 World AIDS Day stickers on ordinary office labels to go on cups and coffee sleeves.

The World Health Organization and the United Nations General Assembly declared World AIDS Day in 1988 to raise awareness of the disease, and Johnson will deliver the coffee cups and sleeves to cafes today. Volunteers from the Central Oregon Community College Gay Straight Alliance and the Queer Youth Space, a project of Human Dignity Coalition, helped put stickers on the coffee cups and sleeves.

“A big aim when we do awareness and education (work) is to decrease the stigma of this disease,” Johnson said. “We have people coming in with an AIDS diagnosis that didn't have to get to that point. In countries like the United States, (HIV) doesn't have to get to the point where it develops into AIDS.”