Local Florida Chapter of National Coalition of 100 Black Women Call for More Action To Prevent Spread of HIV/AIDS

The Greater Palm Beaches Chapter of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women at its annual "power breakfast" in Palm Beach County, Fla., on Tuesday made a "call for action" to prevent the spread of HIV among black women, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports. Florida ranks third in the United States in total number of AIDS cases, according to Florida Department of Health Deputy Secretary Nancy Humbert, who spoke at the event, the Sun-Sentinel reports. The AIDS-related death rate among black women in Florida is 27 times the rate among white women, and one in every 35 blacks in Palm Beach County is HIV-positive, compared with one in every 492 whites in the county. "There is, unfortunately, among women of color in Palm Beach County no issue greater than the scourge of AIDS," Elaine Johnson James, a coalition member, said, adding that black women's "voices aren't heard because there isn't bling bling on their wrists and there isn't ching ching in their pockets." Pernessa Seele, founder and CEO of the New York City-based HIV/AIDS awareness group The Balm in Gilead, said that debates about whether to teach comprehensive or abstinence-only sex education in middle and high schools should not "obscure the need for action" to combat HIV/AIDS, according to the Sun-Sentinel (Gruskin, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 3/23).