Everyone has an experience to share, but few live their story as does Marvelyn Brown. A Tennessee native whose physical appearance might easily cause strangers to initially regard her as a model or entertainer, Brown told her story Tuesday to highlight National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day activities at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
The 27-year-old Brown said that although she felt she had been given a death sentence when she was diagnosed as HIV positive at 19, a second, non-related threat to her being shook her to a point that “I decided to live and make the most of my life.”
“Now I’m grateful that I became HIV positive,” she said. “Because it happened to me, I learned the importance of loving myself and accepting responsibility. And I know I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing — going around the world and telling others to learn from my experiences and take responsibility for themselves.”
She bills herself as a “proud ambassador for the Greater Than AIDS Campaign.”
She advised students that “early detection is important, free and confidential” and that one doesn’t have to be sexually promiscuous to acquire the disease. In her case, she was in an exclusive relationship with a 23-year-old man.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Less than a month after the couple’s first unprotected intercourse, Brown — hospitalized with a high fever and pneumonia — received her diagnosis and telephoned her boyfriend to deliver the news and urge him to be tested. He told Brown he was sorry she was HIV positive, and then apologized for not having told her that he had already been HIV positive.
Brown said she has since forgiven her former partner, along with some one-time friends who abandoned her when she initially announced her health status. One woman in a church setting told Brown that her disease was “God’s punishment for your fornication.”
“I’ve forgiven everyone,” said Brown. “I have to, because God forgives me.”
The Arkansas Minority Health Commission was a sponsor of Tuesday’s event. Idonia Trotter, executive director of the commission, said the agency’s focus on HIV/AIDS is necessary because blacks are most affected by the affliction.
Trotter said that while no cure currently exists, the disease is 100 percent preventable by people being responsible and making the right choices. Major advances in treatment have also been made.
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, blacks comprised 14 percent of the U.S. population but accounted for 44 percent of new HIV infections in 2009. Men accounted for 70 percent of the new infections among blacks. The estimated rate of new HIV infections among black men was nearly seven times as high as that of white males. The CDC estimates that one of every 16 black men and one of every 32 black women will be diagnosed with HIV infection during their lives.
Gay and bisexual black men, however, were the only subpopulation to register a statistically significant increase of new HIV/AIDS cases between 2006 and 2009. The amount of new cases within the category jumped from 4,400 in 2006 to 6,500 in 2009, a 48-percent spike.
About 25 percent of the estimated 1.1 Americans with AIDS acquired the disease through drug use with shared injection needles. But alcohol and non-injected drug use can imperil judgment and and lead to risky sexual behavior and HIV/AIDS, the CDC said. Data from 2005-09 shows that 64 percent of those living with HIV/AIDS had used an illicit drug, but not intravenously. Only 19 percent had never used an illicit drug.