Norton to Get Tested for AIDS at Capitol Today
As Part of Effort to Promote Action by Black Leadership
September 27, 2006

Washington, DC-Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today will be the first Member to be tested for HIV/AIDS in a mobile health bus provided by a local health care provider, Unity Health Care, behind the Rayburn building (South Capitol and C Streets SW) at 2 p.m. TODAY (Wednesday, September 27, 2006.  The testing is part of a larger effort by the Congresswoman to achieve far greater visibility of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the African American community in the District and throughout the country, and to help stop the spread of the disease.  She also will shortly call together a group of African American ministers for a public event, and several other activities are in the planning stage.

This morning Norton also spoke on the House floor on the Black AIDS epidemic and said Congress should not go home at the end of the week without reauthorizing the Ryan White CARE Act.  She said that as the stereotype of the disease has shifted from homosexual to Black "the one constant is its spread."  Norton said that she intended to get tested today at the Capitol because the key missing ingredient in the African American epidemic has been Black leadership on testing, safe sex, and condoms, and on "overcoming homophobia, which is in league with the disease in the Black community."

The Congresswoman's full statement on the House floor follows.

"The international vortex of AIDS is Black Africa. In our country, it is Black America.  How did half of the AIDS cases become African American? Even worse, new cases are overwhelmingly Black.  We've seen this disease stereotyped as homosexual and now as Black.  The one constant is its spread.  Yet, unlike many diseases today, AIDS is preventable and can be contained and defeated.  The answers are not complicated, beginning with leadership.  I will be tested on the Capitol complex grounds in a D.C. health van this afternoon to set an example to help prevent the epidemic spread of the disease.  Leadership on safe sex and condoms. Leadership on overcoming homophobia, which is in league with the disease in the Black community. And above all, leadership from the Congress of the United States, which must not go home without reauthorizing the Ryan White Act."