PORT HUENEME : Red Cross Volunteers Honored for Classes
Twenty-eight Red Cross volunteers who taught classes in AIDS education to nearly 10,000 military personnel at local bases were honored at a luncheon in Port Hueneme Tuesday.
“Looking back, it was amazing,” Susan Habel, a Red Cross volunteer and project chairwoman, said of the instructors. “They’re really dedicated people. This is all just pretty exciting.”
The volunteers, most on active duty themselves, completed a 32-hour training course before they taught the acquired immune deficiency syndrome classes, which are required by federal law.
Participants were from the Point Mugu Naval Air Station and the Port Hueneme Naval Construction Battalion Center.
Habel said most class participants were well-informed on how HIV--the virus that causes AIDS--works and is transmitted.
But Habel said myths and stereotypes persist.
“There are those who still think it’s a gay disease and not a heterosexual disease,” said Scott Rennie, an 18-year Red Cross volunteer and Navy hospital corpsman. “They think they’re immune to it.”
In fact, HIV infection is growing most rapidly among heterosexual women of child-bearing age, Habel said.
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