Over 30 UW-Madison students and faculty gathered in Grainger Hall Monday to join a panel discussion on AIDS. Project 40/40 and AIESEC hosted the panel, which aimed to address common misconceptions about the growing epidemic.
Meena Zia, a UW-Madison junior, said many people think AIDS is only associated with poverty-stricken areas in Africa, when in reality it is a growing epidemic in the Western world.
""It's not just poverty, it's not just education, it's not just policies. It's all those mixed together. Everyone talks about a poverty trap, but it's an AIDS trap,"" Zia said.
Zia spent last summer in the West African county of Ivory Coast with HIV-positive orphan children whose parents had both died from AIDS.
Raisa Koltun, a UW-Madison graduate student, said she spent time in Russia and helped try to tackle the growing rates of AIDS in Eastern Europe. Koltun said the effectiveness of condoms, though important, will not curb the rates of HIV infection by itself.
""There are a lot of people that still have this notion that giving out condoms is going to make people have safe sex. I think that just really hasn't worked out as well as people think,"" Koltun said.
Koltun pointed to issues like unprotected sex and sexually transmitted diseases that are prevalent in places like college campuses, including UW-Madison.
""Raising awareness is the first step with students who have the ability to make changes,"" she said.
Geraldine O'Mahony, a UW-Madison Ph.D. student, spent time educating youth in several African countries about the AIDS epidemic and was also a nurse in the Bosnian Civil War.
O'Mahony said rape can act as a form of genocide in African countries when HIV-positive individuals engage in unprotected sex with uninfected individuals.
""On average, rape happens in South Africa every seven seconds,"" O'Mahony said.
According to O'Mahony, HIV transmission is also rising among young people in Western Europe.
AIESEC is one of the world's largest student organizations. Project 40/40 works with HIV-positive individuals in Uganda and also works with former President Clinton's HIV initiative.
