L.A. Marks World AIDS Day

Marking World AIDS Day, about 100 high school students in Pasadena waved signs at morning commuters Tuesday to remind them that for all the good news about AIDS treatments, the disease has hardly vanished.

Buzz Young needed no reminder.

“Sometimes people who are unaffected have heard about [the new drugs] and treatments and think it’s over,” said Young, a 55-year-old Silver Lake resident who has AIDS. “But it’s not. I’ve been in the hospital six times this year. I’ve had four good friends die this year. So it’s very real to me.”

World AIDS Day was observed Tuesday with a bittersweet mix of hope and gloom. New drugs may have transformed life for many with AIDS in America, but new infections and death continue.

Globally, the disease is exploding in some sectors, particularly in Africa, where a quarter of the adult population in some countries is infected with HIV, the AIDS virus.

In Los Angeles County, about 12,000 people have AIDS and another 12,000 have HIV. Between 1,500 and 2,000 are infected annually. The number of AIDS deaths has dropped sharply, but AIDS cases are rising significantly among minorities and women.

Armando Garcia, 24, learned two months ago that he has the AIDS virus. “It makes me angry that even after I told my friends I’m HIV-positive, they’re still practicing unsafe sex,” Garcia said at a scantily attended safe sex presentation at Los Angeles City College.

“I wanted to come here because I wanted to go public with what happened to me,” he said. “If people hear about sex education and condoms from someone who is HIV-positive, they might change their behavior.”

At Chapman University in Orange, hundreds of students and residents viewed four panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, while at an East Los Angeles memorial, Margaret Santos of Corona wept quietly as she spoke of her son, Ron Santos, who died of AIDS in July at the age of 32.

“He lives in my heart and in my memory,” she said.

In the first 10 months of this year, Latinos accounted for 46% of new AIDS cases in the county, and blacks 20%, according to county health data. “Here in East L.A., AIDS is a Latino epidemic,” said Al Ballesteros, co-chairman of the county AIDS Commission.

On skid row Tuesday, the Los Angeles Mission and the county’s HIV/Homeless Task Force administered free HIV tests to the homeless.