MCC Holds Latino AIDS Awareness Event ROCHESTER, NY (WXXI) - Monroe Community College's (MCC) Damon City Campus celebrated National Latino AIDS Awareness Day Monday with free testing and health screenings.

A record number of visitors received HIV/AIDS tests and screenings for blood pressure and glucose at the event.
Melany Silas is an instructor with MCC's health and physical education department. She helped pull the annual event together, which she says provides education about prevention of HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted disease for the entire community.

Silas says people of color are disproportionately more affected by HIV and AIDS, so the school participates in national events to raise awareness about how the disease can be contracted and treated.

The HIV/AIDS test that was administered today was a swab test, which looks for antibodies in the saliva in your mouth. Swabs are analyzed within 20 minutes, and ff antibodies are found, it's considered a preliminary diagnosis of HIV/AIDS positivity. A blood test that takes about a week to process is then done to confirm seropositivity.

The next testing and screening opportunity at MCC will be National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day on February 6, 2008. Silas says everyone is welcome to receive a screening.

Latinos make up less than 15 percent of the US population, but they've accounted for nearly 20 percent of AIDS cases since the start of the epidemic.
© Copyright 2009, WXXI