People Still Die of AIDS in Santa Barbara County
Memorial Quilts Return to Remember the Past-and-Present Fatal Disease
After a spike in Ventura County more than doubled HIV diagnoses between 2016 and 2017, the Quilt Project Gold Coast — which encompasses Santa Barbara and Ventura counties — has been working to get the number down to zero. To raise awareness that HIV/AIDS remains a potent danger in the community, in October, Gold Coast is bringing back two of the quilts made to remember the thousands of people who died in the U.S. AIDS epidemic before treatments were developed.
Diagnoses in Ventura County dropped after 2017, but even so, 12 people died in 2018 in Ventura County of AIDS, the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome that can result from contracting HIV, or the human immunodeficiency virus. In Santa Barbara County, five people died of AIDS last year. In 1994, AIDS was the leading cause of death among Americans ages 25-44, according to hiv.gov. Gold Coast organizer Keith Coffman-Grey reminded that the original quilts were three feet by six feet in size: “Almost the size of a grave,” he said. When the AIDS Memorial Quilt was displayed in its entirety in Washington, D.C., in 1994, it covered the entire National Mall.
New diagnoses of HIV continue to occur in Santa Barbara County, 32 in 2018; the rate of infection averaged at about 28 over the past five years. Of the 32 cases in 2018, 10 patients had both an HIV and AIDS diagnosis, which meant their T-cell count was seriously low when they were tested. “Dual diagnosis of HIV/AIDS is concerning,” said Michelle Wehmer of Santa Barbara County Public Health, “because the AIDS diagnosis could have been avoided if HIV had been diagnosed earlier.” The department recommends that people being tested for HIV be screened for all sexually transmitted infections, and vice versa.
