Imagine AIDS 101 with a difference

Old AIDS

Imagine AIDS 101 with a difference. The people gathered to learn about HIV, how it is spread, and how they can protect themselves and others are not young gay men. They are not adolescents. They are not intravenous drug users, people coming out of the prison system, or members of any of the other usually targeted groups. The audience this time consists of residents and staff of the Sirovich Senior Center of the Educational Alliance, located on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Presenter Joan Zimmerman is Program Director of Spectrum HIV/AIDS Services at the Park Slope Center for Mental Health, one of only two programs in the city for aging people with AIDS (PWAs), and this particular seminar is one of distressingly few education and prevention efforts aimed at older individuals.

Looking at the majority of safer sex workshops and street outreach programs, one would get the impression that only the young are at risk of contracting HIV. And it's true that most PWAs are young. But, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over 10 percent of Americans who test positive for the virus are over the age of 50. In New York City, the number of newly diagnosed people who fall within that age group may be closer to 15 percent.

It's not just with regard to prevention that over-50s are left behind. Older people with HIV are often misdiagnosed and typically learn that they have the virus only later in the disease process. Medical treatment is more difficult, both because of the later diagnosis and factors related to age. Few practitioners are expert both in HIV and the health problems associated with aging. When it comes to social support services aimed at their particular needs, older PWAs are all but invisible. Our attitudes about AIDS and the aging reflect the beliefs we have built up about how people behave in their second half-century: