Survivor preaches hope on AIDS Day
Kathleen Pratt could have griped about how unfair life can be. She could have fretted constantly over what would happen to her.
Instead, she turned bad fortune into a cause.
“I believe everything happens for a reason,” Pratt said Monday at AIDS Community Services’ new Evergreen Conference Center on West Chippewa Street.
Pratt tells the story of how 17 years ago she received shocking news from a former boyfriend. He told her he was infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and was likely infected when they had had sex years before.
An HIV test indicated Pratt was infected and had never known it.
“At first, I didn’t believe what was happening to me. Then I just wanted to commit suicide,” she said.
At the time, Pratt was a stay-at- home mom with two children, a 1-year-old son and a 10- year-old daughter. Now 44, she offers thanks that her children are unaffected by a virus that infects about 56,000 people a year in the United States.
Pratt spoke about her experience during observances in Buffalo of World AIDS Day.
Several dozen people, many affiliated with AIDS Community Services, gathered at the conference center, which was decorated with more than 100 handmade memorial quilts crafted as tributes to Western New Yorkers who have died from AIDS.
“Each is a work of art, a loud testimony to a life lived in the shadow of death,” said Ronald Silverio, executive director of the organization.
The participants also walked down the street to the bu i lding on Elmwood Avenue that houses AIDS Community Services, where the lawn was decorated with red ribbons in memory of people killed by AIDS. They decorated a weeping evergreen tree with more red ribbons.
“There is still an epidemic of HIV and AIDS that affects people living in our community every day,” said Silverio, referring to the more than 4,000 people, and their families, in the region currently living with HIV.
The latest national estimates indicate that about 994,000 individuals were living with HIV at the end of 2003, and that HIV prevalence increased by about 11 percent by 2006 to 1,106,400 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The increase was an expected result from the growing ability of antiretroviral treatments to extend the lives of infected individuals and because more people become infected with HIV than die from the disease each year.
But the medical success story creates a challenge. Experts say the growing number of people living with HIV has increased the need for HIV testing, treatment and prevention services.
Pratt tries to do her part.
For the past eight years, she has made herself available to speak to students at middle and high schools. Her message is simple.
“I tell kids it’s OK to be virgins in an age when sex can be lethal,” said Pratt, a former model.
With her husband’s help, she’s been crossing off items on a list she wrote of everything she wants to do before she dies.
“I’ve gone skydiving and been to Hawaii,” Pratt said. “I still want to get to Australia.”
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