ATTN: Heterosexuals - Taking action to find love

Did you know that if you are one of the 1% percent of Americans to have been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, finding that special someone may present quite a challenge. However, we must not give up. Please read this and you can make a difference and improve your chances.

Consider these statistics:

Overall, CDC researchers estimate that between 1,039,000 and 1,185,000 people in the U.S. were living with HIV in December 2003. Of those, they estimate about a quarter are unaware that they are infected with HIV. Three quarters of infected are men (approx. 887,750 using high number).

From the total men infected:

45% were men who had sex with men (MSM)
22% were injection drug users (IDU)
27% were exposed through heterosexual contact

Approximate percentages of all living with HIV/AIDS by race:
34% were white
47% were black
17% were Hispanic
2% were of other race/ethnicity.

SOURCES FOR ABOVE DATA: 2005 National HIV Prevention Conference, Atlanta, June 12-15, 2005. News release, National HIV Prevention Conference.

From these numbers you can deduce that the number of available male Hispanic heterosexuals that were not infected via IV drug use throughout the U.S. would be approximately 30,000. The number of females meeting this same criteria would be less than half that of men.

If you then subtract from those numbers to account for the items below the number of possible matches become so much smaller.

* Percentage to account for the fact that not everyone post on the same personals site or simply do not post because they are unaware of their status, already have mates or are not comfortable with personal ads or simply because they have given up.
* Percentage of those not meeting age, height, weight, location, educational and cultural criteria

How do we then find that special someone? How can we join together to create one truly useful and trusted site where we can all go regardless of our needs and privacy concerns and still feel comfortable?

I don't know of any heterosexual only sites but I find the personal site at www.poz.com is very nice. The best thing about this site is that it accommodates all genders and it is free. It also provides the opportunity of exchanging messages without having to use your personal e-mail account. It is very well structured and monitored. If we can all do something to point people to this site we can improve our chances of success in meeting new friends and our search for a soul mate. We cannot just post an ad and hope for the best. I am suggesting that we get creative and use every resource we have. Make a copy of this message and post it on any other message or bulletin board you know of that positives go to. That could be another site such as this one or your doctor’s office or write an article about it or post it at your support group meeting location. In this way we can spread the word that the site to go to is at POZ.com and maybe we’ll get lucky.

Post Extras: Remind Me!