Free AIDS testing raises awareness

One of the world’s most infectious diseases is still not fully understood by people.

On Tuesday, an event was held both nationwide and at UNC to increase understanding.

The campus community celebrated World AIDS Day by setting up a free HIV test in the Great Hall of the Student Union. It was sponsored by UNC Student Wellness, the Student Health Action Coalition and the UNC Center for AIDS Research.

Event co-coordinator Diana Sanchez said UNC has been conducting the free tests since the 1990s and typically draws a crowd that includes students, faculty and other community members.

“We like to think that it removes some of the barriers to testing by testing in a convenient spot and making it free, and encouraging people to bring friends, roommates, partners,” she said.

Sanchez, a sexual wellness specialist and Ph.D. student in the Gillings School of Global Public Health, has been hosting the event for three years, and it typically attracts about 100 or 200 people. Co-coordinator Jesse Goldberg said 77 people came this year.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are more than one million people in the United States living with HIV.

Goldberg has worked at UNC’s Center for AIDS Research and said awareness on campus of HIV and AIDS has increased due to more people signing up for Public Health 420, which is titled “AIDS: Policies and Practices.”

“Students are always asking for more testing opportunities around campus and somewhere they can get free testing,” he said.

Sanchez said the event has helped clear up misunderstandings about HIV.

“I think some of the other facts about symptoms, testing, resources on campus are a little bit less known by students on campus so that’s something that we’re hoping to increase,” Sanchez said.

Senior Tyler Johnson, who volunteered at the event, said he learned much of what he knows about diseases and safe sex from Public Health 420.

“Growing up they just kind of used scare tactics like, ‘don’t get AIDS,’ and it was mostly like, ‘don’t have sex,’” he said.

Johnson said the course and his volunteer work with the wellness center has given him a completely different perspective on HIV and AIDS.

“I didn’t even know the difference between HIV and AIDS,” he said. “I thought if you got AIDS it was a death sentence like how it was when it first started … When I got to UNC I got to learn about what it means to have HIV today, all the ways it can be treated, how to get tested.”

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