THE ISSUE: AIDS

TEENS ARE DOING IT- BUT NOT DOING IT WELL OF THE 5,000 YOUNG AMERICANS DIAGNOSED WITH HIV THIS YEAR, 70 PERCENT WILL BE BLACK

When 16-year-old Maché chase came across a new study noting that one-fourth of all teenage girls, and nearly half of all black girls, have a sexually transmitted disease, she barely took notice. “It wasn’t a shocker to me,” says Chase. “A lot of [teens] out here are having sex, and you can tell a lot of people don’t protect themselves. At my school, we have a lot of girls in the lower grades pregnant.”


Chase lives in Washington, D.C., ground zero in the war against HIV—experts say that one in 20 residents of the city is infected, more than in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. And more than 80 percent of D.C.’s HIV patients are black. But while Chase may be at risk, she’s also more knowledgeable about the facts of life than many adults. And the facts are not good: According to the latest data, the rate of new HIV infections is nearly 50 percent higher than previously believed.


Twelve years after powerful new drug therapies led the media to write about “the end of AIDS,” America has seen a resurgence of new infections, and 70 percent of the estimated 5,000 young people diagnosed with HIV this year will be black teenagers. After school, instead of hanging out in the neighborhood, Chase comes to a small basement office in Southeast Washington with a sign on the front that advertises free HIV testing. This is the home of Metro Teen AIDS (MTA), a community health organization founded in 1988, as the AIDS epidemic began ravaging the country.

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