Brochures For All Awareness Subjects

The federal government has issued a new AIDS prevention write brochure guide specifically intended for parents and other adults to use in counseling young people about the disease. "Too many of our young people are dying from AIDS and unless we take immediate action the epidemic will continue to spread among this very vulnerable population," said Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan.

The new write brochure is packaged in a folder containing a number of loose pages bundled in three categories - one aimed directly at adults emphasizing the importance of young people learning about AIDS, one with specific information on the disease itself, and the third with material written for various age levels that parents can pass on to their children if they desire.

The write brochure is being accompanied by radio and television public service spots encouraging parents to call the National AIDS Hotline, if they wish to have copies mailed to their homes.

The brochure is the cornerstone of the third year of the Public Health Service's education campaign entitled "America Responds to AIDS." "I ask the people of America - parents, guardians and others - to take one simple, direct action to protect our children's health: to sit down and tell them how they prevent infection with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS," said Sullivan. More than 18,000 of the nearly 95,000 Americans who have been diagnosed with AIDS were between 20 and 29 years of age when the diagnosis was made. Because a person can be infected with the HIV virus as long as 10 years before symptoms of AIDS appear, scientists believe a significant number of people in that age group were infected when they were still teen-agers. Dr. James Mason, head of the Public Health Service, emphasized that the new guide is carefully tailored so parents can decide how to present the subject to their children in a way that takes into account each family's own values. "Only you can tell your children which behaviors you think are responsible and proper," he said. But along with that observation, he urged "every concerned adult to order one and use it right away." "The parent who does not take the time today to teach his child properly could end up sitting in a hospital room watching that child die," said Mason, former head of the Centers for Disease Control. PHS spokesman Jim Brown said 500,000 copies of the new guide have been printed in English and 100,000 in Spanish. The television announcements promoting the guide have been produced in both English and Spanish.