BURBANK : Red Cross to Start HIV/AIDS Council

The attempt to make Burbank residents aware that AIDS can hit close to home--or even at home--begins Monday, said Steve Goldfarb, health and safety coordinator for the Burbank chapter of the American Red Cross.

In the last 10 years, at least 202 Burbank residents have developed AIDS after contacting the HIV virus, and 138 of them have died, Goldfarb said. More than half of the Burbank AIDS patients--109--came down with the disease in their 20s to mid-30s.

“They’re contracting it back in their teens and it’s showing up 10 years later,” said Goldfarb, who Monday will start the new Burbank HIV/AIDS Council.

HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is transmitted through sex or other contact with bodily fluids, such as blood, and by shared needles, but it may be years before someone who is infected with the virus gets full-blown AIDS.

“And we don’t know how many people they infected along the way,” Goldfarb said.

Goldfarb wants the new council, which will focus on education and coordinating support for those who have it, to break through some of the prevailing attitudes he said he has encountered recently while trying to teach local groups the facts.

“Some people feel their kids just can’t get it,” he said. “The kids themselves feel they can’t get it.”

Goldfarb, who has worked in Burbank for six months, found many people who are afraid of talking about the issue and often ignore the message that he is trying to get across: “It could affect anyone, and if you aren’t aware of how it’s transmitted and how to prevent it, you run a risk.”

Because children are having sex at an earlier age, the risk of teen-agers getting the virus is higher, Goldfarb said.

The Burbank Red Cross chapter this year gave the Burbank Unified School District $8,500 in books to be used in a new AIDS curriculum recently approved by the Board of Education.

The council’s first meeting will be Monday at 4:30 p.m. at the Red Cross, 1001 W. Magnolia Blvd.