St. Louis region sees increase in women testing positive for HIV

By Shoshana Stahl

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    ST. LOUIS, Missouri (KMOV) — A rise in HIV cases amongst women is being seen across the Metro.

Juliana Castellanos is the HIV prevention director for Affinia Healthcare and said in the St. Louis region, and across the country, more women are being diagnosed with HIV.

Castellanos said in the Metro, 18% of all positive HIV cases are women.

“Women in general, it’s been a little bit harder to change the mindset that hey, you also can get HIV,” Castellanos said.

Castellanos said the groups seeing the largest amount of positive HIV cases are transgender women, young women between 13 and 24 years old, and it’s disproportionately impacting black women in the community.

“Black women are facing more challenges to have access to care, to have prevention and everything related,” Castellanos said.

Yvette is sharing her story after being diagnosed with HIV 28 years ago.

“As soon as I decided to tell my family, I was ousted,” Yvette said. “It took me years to educate my family.”

However, Yvette is keeping her face anonymous.

“When you put a face to it, it’s a stigma,” Yvette said. “We don’t need a face. We need a word out. We need those voices.”

Erise Williams’ organization, Williams and Associates, focuses on addressing minority health disparities in the community.

“Now there’s a new generation and they haven’t gotten that intense education previous generations have,” Williams said.

Williams said offering free and confidential HIV testing is one step in helping stop the numbers from continuing to go up.

“There’s this disparity in our healthcare system and that’s across the country,” Williams said. “That’s based on socioeconomic status, race, what zip code you live in.”

Yvette said a lot of the information that comes out around education and prevention isn’t directed towards women.

That is something Yvette said needs to change.

“Women are not given the proper information because of a stigma,” Yvette said.

All three of them emphasized abstinence or using condoms to practice safe sex as another key part of the prevention.

Affinia Healthcare is hosting an HIV awareness event Sunday afternoon.

The event is focusing on women, but men are welcome and there will be on-the-spot HIV testing.

The event is happening Sunday, March 10, from 2 p.m. until 5 p.m. at Rouge Bistro, which is located at 3037 Olive Street in St. Louis City.

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