Eva M. Clayton: “I did mention a little bit about the incidence increasing in my district. I live in a rural district, as the gentlewoman…”

“I did mention a little bit about the incidence increasing in my district. I live in a rural district, as the gentlewoman knows. She has been to my district. Sometimes in a rural area, we do not think what happens to cities happens to a rural area, like crime. We get crime, too. But surprisingly for a number of reasons, it has not been reported or people were not reporting themselves and all of a sudden the incidence is going up. In fact, we represent, in eastern North Carolina, a little more than my district, though, I represent about 30 percent of all the new HIV reported. We represent only 12 percent of the population in my district. So the disproportion of the increase has been that people are lax, they do not have the information, they are not taking the precaution, and also there is not this kind of sophisticated infrastructure both in community and education and medical to bring the awareness. We are now forming this partnership in the community to bring to the attention that in our local area, we do not have a pandemic, I am not trying to scare, as you say, people to things that are not there, but we are alarming them of what things are there and the potential. And people are coming forward to say what their conditions are, how they are struggling, either they do not have homes or once they know they have AIDS sometimes their family puts them out. There are all kinds of human tragedies and stories we hear.”