Kelli Newcom, Mikayla Farnum are raising HIV awareness at UP.
Sentinel photo by Ed Langlois

They are 20-somethings who have never known a world without AIDS, and they want peers and the wider community to know the disease is still a global scourge.

Kelli Newcom and Mikayla Farnum, two University of Portland nursing students, have started an HIV and AIDS awareness campaign on campus. They are seeking to update knowledge on a health crisis that has faded from public consciousness.

“People don’t know about AIDS,” says Newcom, a senior from Bishop Blanchet High in Seattle. “They think it’s just a homosexual problem or just over in Africa. People don’t know that it’s infecting more women than men and that it’s now a heterosexual’s disease.”

Newcom and Farnum say that college students who choose to be sexually active seem more worried about getting pregnant or getting herpes than contracting HIV.

“It’s the immortality of youth,” says Farnum, a sophomore from Benson High School in Portland.

In July, the two attended a national Catholic conference on AIDS with a scholarship from Catholic Relief Services. The nation’s Catholic overseas relief agency wants young people to be aware that AIDS is still an urgent problem.

In the late 1980s, the University of Portland was the site of meetings as the public struggled to deal with fear wrought by AIDS. Doctors spoke about the facts of the disease and church leaders called for compassion and service. The intensity of those early days of the crisis was dampened as the disease became less mysterious and more treatable.

But Newcom and Farnum have learned that AIDS continues to wither many lives, both in developing nations, the U.S. and closer to home. They say that there are faculty and staff at the university who are infected.

“It affects those around us,” Newcom says.

“Some day it could affect our families or any of us, too,” Farnum adds.
At the conference in Chicago, they met a patient from a small town in Minnesota who must take 93 pills per day to stay alive. The woman teeters on the edge of toxic overload and is ostracized by her rural community. The pill regimen is not only complicated, but too expensive in many cases. Some drugs are so new that they are not covered by health insurance. Overseas, even the tried and true drugs are often not available because of cost. The disease is spreading most rapidly now in India. Some people can carry HIV without knowing, causing a high risk of infecting others. In some cultures, men believe they can be cured of AIDS if they have sexual relations with a virgin.

“It’s an issue all nursing students should know about,” says Farnum. “It’s still a problem. We don’t have it under control. There are as many people infected each year as there are those who are dying of AIDS and there are lots dying.”

The United Nations and World Health Organization estimate that in 2006 there were about 40 million people infected on the planet. That year more than 4 million people became newly infected and about 3 million died of AIDS. More than 25 million people have died of AIDS since 1981, says the United Nations.

Pope Benedict and bishops worldwide have called for compassion and have stood by abstinence and monogamy as the only tried and true ways to stop the spread of AIDS. Some church leaders have pondered allowing condom use for married couples when one spouse is infected.

Amid end-of-term projects and exams, Newcom and Farnum are selling t-shirts, organizing speakers and setting up a prayer vigil — all for students and residents of Portland.

A panel discussion is set for 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 26, in the Buckley Center on campus. It will include a nurse who joined her profession because of AIDS and a Holy Cross priest who served as a missionary in Uganda and Kenya. A primer called AIDS 101 is set for 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 27, in room 163 of Buckley Center. AIDS medications and physiological affects will be discussed by microbiology Prof. David Alexander.

Between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 28, there will be a letter-writing campaign and free espresso drinks. Letters will go out to senators seeking continuation of U.S. assistance on AIDS to Africa. The interfaith prayer vigil is set for 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 29, in the Chapel of Christ the Teacher. Participants will carry candles and pray for “eyes to recognize our common humanity, and the ears to hear the muted cries of those suffering from HIV and AIDS.” They will ask the almighty for “the courage to dispel fear and ignorance of the pandemic within our community here.”

The vigil will include testimony written by those living with HIV and AIDS and singing of “We Shall Overcome.”

Holy Cross Father Michael Belinsky, a campus minister who has served people living with AIDS, will preside at the vigil, which was assembled by Farnum and Newcom.

“It’s an important thing that they are doing,” Father Belinsky says. “AIDS us still a quiet killer that carries a lot of prejudice.”