Black Celebrities Line Up for Public HIV Screening

June 27 is National HIV Testing Day, and to encourage more black Americans to be tested for the deadly virus, the Screen Actors Guild, the Black AIDS Institute, Artists for a New South Africa, Palms Residential Care Facility and the Beverly Hills/Hollywood branch of the NAACP will hold a press conference and HIV screening at SAG headquarters in California.

According to a SAG press release, the screening will feature black celebrities, including Tatyana Ali, Vanessa Williams, Jimmy Lean-Louis, Hill Harper, Henry Simmons, Ovie Mughelli and Sheryl Lee Ralph, being tested for HIV in front of the cameras.

The Black AIDS Mobilization, a group of organizations fighting HIV/AIDS in the black community, hopes to cut HIV rates in black America by 50 percent by the year 2012. According to the United States Centers for Disease Control, black Americans make up nearly 50 percent of the 1.3 million Americans living with HIV/AIDS, but black Americans make up just 13 percent if the U.S. population.

In 2005,more than 54 percent of new HIV/AIDS patients are black, and AIDS is a leading cause of death among black women between the ages of 24 and 34. Blacks have an infection rate eight times that of White Americans. Just 50 percent of black Americans know their HIV status, and of those people in the U.S. that are HIV positive, it is estimated that 25 percent do not know they carry the virus. Researchers believe that up to half of gay and bisexual black men are HIV positive.

The U.S. CDC call AIDS an epidemic in the black community and encourage more black Americans to be tested and know their status. Many black Americans are reluctant to be tested out of fear and the stigma that AIDS carries in the black communities. Homophobia is also cited as a reason that many black Americans refuse to be tested, but according to the CDC 25 percent of male infections and 78 percent of female infections are due to heterosexual contact.