Northern Virginia residents and Alexandria officials gathered last night (Monday) for the city’s annual World AIDS Day commemoration to encourage public health education and community testing.
The event featured musical performances by the Northern Virginia World AIDS Day Choir and musician Tony Craddock, a Q&A panel and free HIV testing available afterward. Mayor Alyia Gaskins also read a proclamation acknowledging the day “to show solidarity and strength against HIV stigma.”
Some 1,300 Alexandria residents live with HIV. The city holds the fifth highest rate of residents with HIV in Virginia and the highest rate of HIV infection in all of Northern Virginia.
The commemoration took place at the Nannie J. Lee Recreation Center, just miles from the White House, which did not commemorate World AIDS Day for the first time since 1988. The day was created by the World Health Organization to honor the memory of millions of people who have died of AIDS and related illnesses worldwide. This year’s theme was “overcoming disruption, transforming the AIDS response.”
“There was a news feed, news message that came out about World AIDS Day commemoration going further … it was to stop it from happening on an annual basis. This is coming from our president to the State Department,” Cynthia Batson, President of Delta Sigma Theta’s Northern Virginia Alumnae Chapter (NoVAC) and a clinic manager at DeWitt Army Hospital, said. “But we talked with our region, and we said, ‘full steam ahead, this program will go.'”
This year’s Q&A included Charles Sumpter, the former chair of the city’s Commission on HIV/AIDS, along with DiscovHER Health founder Jenna Perkins and Dr. Natalie Bowman, chair of the Health Committee for Delta Sigma Theta’s NoVAC.
Sumpter said he had experienced months of unexplained fatigue and was just “a couple hundred T cells away” from an AIDS diagnosis when he was first diagnosed with HIV. He said doctors ran “a million tests” before testing for the virus.
“In that time, the city of Alexandria had some of the highest rates of [HIV] infection in the commonwealth, and we did a lot of work to get that down, which we’re very proud of,” Sumpter said. “But the work is not over.”
Today, Sumpter said his HIV diagnosis is undetectable through the use of medication, meaning he cannot pass it to others
“I manage it just as much as you’re managing your diabetes, right?” Sumpter recalled telling his mother. “You take that pill every day.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that every person between ages 13 and 64 be tested for HIV at least once. In and around Alexandria, free and confidential testing is available at the following sources.
Treatment and testing education is available from the Alexandria Health Department by calling 703-746-4996.
