MADISON, Wis. — Since the early 1980s, more than 9,800 cases of HIV have been reported in Wisconsin. Of that total, an estimated 6,200 people are still living with HIV or AIDS and more than 3,600 have died.
Saturday is World AIDS Day 2007, and the theme is “leadership.” A local woman is working to increase public awareness by asking people to look past HIV/AIDS and see the person.
In a clinic exam room, a doctor might run tests, but Heidi Nass, an HIV/AIDS patient advocate and educator at University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison, offers patients a kind of therapy that doesn’t involve needles or pills. She listens and shares.