Periscope

Issue date: 4/17/09 Section: News

Mary Shotwell-Smith, Director of Student Health Services [Click to enlarge]

Small, rural cities in the South are among the fastest growing of new cases of AIDS and the HIV virus, according to the staff director of the Rome AIDS Resource Council, Jeanne Cahill.

"Rome and Floyd County unfortunately fit that demographic too perfectly," said Claudia Oakes, executive director of the Rome AIDS Resource Council.

Despite the growth, the cumulative number of AIDS and HIV cases in Rome, Ga. has dropped by nearly 30 cases, according to a 2008 Northwest Health District Surveillance Summary released by the Georgia AIDS Coalition.

"In the past two years, we've had 1 out of 100 people test positive for the HIV virus here in Rome," said Cahill.

Recently, Mary Shotwell-Smith, director of Shorter's Student Health Services, provided students with an opportunity to receive free HIV testing at the schoolwide health fair.

"No one I know of has the virus here at Shorter," said Shotwell-Smith. "We had extremely good results from the HIV tests we gave at the health fair."

Although Shorter's results are satisfactory for Shotwell-Smith, others, like Hawk's Nest manager June Smith, believe that Shorter needs to promote more awareness for the virus.

"I believe we need more testing, and the subject needs to be stressed more around the campus," Smith.

It was reported in 2007 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that an estimate of 33.2 million people worldwide carry the disease and that the disease killed 2.1 million people, including 330,000 children.

"AIDS poses a severe public health problem in the United States and globally," said assistant professor of biology, Jennifer Davis. "The consequence is death if the virus is untreated."

Presently, there is no cure to stop the spread of AIDS once it enters the human body, but there is medicine that can slow down the process.

"Anyone who has the virus must take a cocktail worth of expensive medicine to slow the virus down," said Shotwell-Smith.

Shotwell-Smith continued, "But we've come a long way in providing a way to stay healthy longer for those with the virus."

The Rome AIDS Resource Council provides free, confidential testing, and the council also schedules comprehensive sex education classes for teenagers.

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