BIG blue condom. Yes, if you saw it walking down the street on Tuesday, you weren’t dreaming.
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Beneath the costume was student Courtney Bright, accompanied by a group of teens in the Pathfinders AIDS/HIV Awareness Youth Team.
They were walking loud and proud to raise awareness for World AIDS Day, which falls on Monday. The team had a table set up in front of Jobs Australia with information, giveaways, AIDS ribbons and a sausage sizzle to draw some attention to a very serious issue.
NSW statistics are sobering in light of what the world knows about the virus. According to Dr Miriam Grotowski of the Tamworth Sexual Health Clinic, about 10,500 people are living with an HIV diagnosis in NSW, but about 10 percent of those with the virus my be unaware they have the infection.
Tamworth-based Hunter New England population health worker, Bernie Green was staffing the table with the young people. He said the highest contributing factor of infection was unprotected sex.
Bernie said testing and treatment were the emphasis for the 2014 World Aids Day theme: ‘Ending HIV’.
“(NSW is) hoping by 2020 there’s no new transmissions; HIV transmissions, and that’s what they’re aiming at,” he said.
Jasmine Conn is a member of the Youth Team. She felt many young people risk HIV and AIDS for several reasons.
“A lot of young people are not taking awareness and not using protection which means they’ll get AIDS quicker,” she said.
“And some people are too ashamed to come up and speak about it and won’t get help about it, which means it could spread to other people. That’s why we’re trying to raise awareness so they know about that and we can help them.”
Pathfinders Specialist Homelessness Service manager, Trish Thomas, worked with the teens when they were part of the Each Youth Connections. The local program has been defunded, but she said the team has stayed together and found a new home with Pathfinders.