Did you know that:

• Worldwide, 5 young people are infected with HIV every minute, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)'s data?


• In the United States, 2 people under age 25 are infected every hour?


• Over half of all new infections in the U.S. occur in young people, ages 15-25?


• More men than women are infected in the United States--but, for young people ages 13-19, most new infections are in women who are infected by heterosexual contact?


• The infection rate has increased especially dramatically for young women aged 15-19, whose infection rate has recently more than doubled


• Blacks and Hispanics--who make up 25% of the United States population--represent 56% of all AIDS cases reported to the CDC between June, 1981 and December, 2000?


• HIV infects 1 out of 10 persons in sub-Saharan Africa, and many of those infected are under fifteen. What if that happened here?

  Edgar Allen Poe wrote The Masque of the Red Death about an epidemic that could not be walled out! Poe's Red Death (which was something like the Plague in Europe), crossed borders.