Group Hopes to Bring Re-Awareness to HIV/AIDS

An area official is calling on the Galesburg community to once again bring the afflictions of H.I.V. and AIDS back to the forefront of public thinking. Tuesday was World AIDS Day, and has been the case for the last decade, the Western Illinois H.I.V./AIDS Task Force held a ceremonial tree-lighting at the Knox County Health Department. Mike Maginn is the Executive Director of the group Central Illinois Friends of People with AIDS -- a group that provides help and treatment for people afflicted with the disease throughout the area including Knox County. Maginn says there have been many advances in the treatment of AIDS in the last few decades, and while that's a very good thing, it's also had a potentially unintended consequence. "Our complacency is killing people, and it has to stop," Maginn said. "We must start talking about this disease again. By not talking about it, it does not mean that it will go away. It is unacceptable that H.I.V. and AIDS remains unchecked in communities of color, and that AIDS is the number one killer of women worldwide between the ages of 15 and 44." Maginn says it's statistics like that and others that clearly indicate instances of H.I.V. and AIDS are on the rise, that he says has to change -- in part, through public awareness. He says there's still a mentality that AIDS affects, for example, only people in Africa, when Maginn believes nothing could be further from the truth. For more information on Central Illinois Friends of People with AIDS, CLICK HERE. (Mike Maginn, Executive Director of Central Illinois Friends of People with AIDS, speaks on World AIDS Day Tuesday at the Knox County Health Department.) (Ashley German-Cooper, right, Vice President of the HIV/AIDS Task Force of Western Illinois, presents a $2,700 check to Mike Maginn, Executive Director of Central Illinois Friends of People with AIDS. That was the money raised from the annual Red Ribbon Classic held in Galesburg in October.) (Mary Lou Riley, left, and Shirley Sandborg, right, place a red AIDS Awareness ribbon on a tree outside of the Knox County Health Department Tuesday marking World AIDS Day.) (The World AIDS Day tree outside the Knox County Health Department. WGIL News Story and Photos by Will Stevenson.)

12 02 09 by Newsroom

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