For the past 10 years, Alicia Keys has been working within her organization, Keep a Child Alive, to help those children in Africa that are suffering from HIV-AIDS. Now, she is turning her focus back to the United States and has joined with “Greater than AIDS” to start a new program called “Empowered”, a new informative campaign aimed at reaching and informing women in the United States about HIV-AIDS.
According to the “Empowered” website, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, most commonly known as HIV, is the virus that, in it’s advanced stages, causes AIDS. This virus is spread when bodily fluids including, semen, vaginal fluids, blood, and breast milk, are transferred from a person infected with HIV enter another person’s body. There are approximately 1.1 million people living with HIV in the United States alone. One in every 4 of the infected people are women.
This week, Keys sat down with ABC News’ David Muir for an interview about her new project and why it is so important to start bringing awareness back to the United States.
“Talking about HIV-AIDS, you know, it’s critical and it is our generation’s issue and if we don’t talk about it now, it’s going to continue,” she said. “We tend to have a good international dialogue, like a good, healthy dialogue, but we’re not really discussing it in America. … We have to learn as much as we can and we have to share with as many people we can.”
We all have the power to change the course of this disease & if we use it. We can all be #EMPOWERED in the face of AIDS!!
— Alicia Keys (@aliciakeys) August 21, 2013
“When I became aware that women accounted for one in five new HIV infections occurring in the U.S. each year, it shook me to the core and I realized this is an issue we ALL need to pay attention to,” said Keys. “Whether HIV positive or negative, we all have the opportunity to educate ourselves and make a difference.”