Health News
2007-02-08
New York City
AIDS activist unveils rowboat for Atlantic Ocean trip
An AIDS activist
plans to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean later this
year to draw attention to the high rat
An AIDS activist
plans to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean later this
year to draw attention to the high rate of HIV among the
U.S. blacks.
Victor Mooney's
first attempt two years ago ended less than two hours
after he started from the coast of Senegal when his boat
leaked. But he says he is better prepared now and
determined to succeed.
''It's important
that I continue this quest, because this disease is
preventable,'' he said Wednesday, also National Black
HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. He lost a brother to AIDS, and
another brother has HIV.
Mooney, 41, wants
to be the first black person to row solo across the
Atlantic. He plans to follow the transatlantic slave-trade
route that brought blacks to the Americas from Africa
and to connect the AIDS plight of the continents.
His route from
Goree Island, Senegal--once a prison and auction site for
slaves bound for the Americas--to the Caribbean will begin
December 1, World AIDS Day.
''You're rowing
16 to 18 hours a day, two hours at a time, with a
half-hour break,'' he said. ''Depending on weather
conditions, you can anchor and sleep while going with
the current if it's favorable.''
His new boat will
be professionally built and equipped with a satellite
telephone, emergency beacons and a tracking service.
Solo rows across
the Atlantic Ocean are notoriously perilous, with fewer
than 50 people having completed the journey, according to
the England-based Ocean Rowing Society.
''Sometimes you
don't make it on the first attempt, but you keep
trying,'' Mooney said.
More than half of
all newly diagnosed infections of HIV in the United
States have been documented in the black population,
according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. Forty-seven percent of the approximately 1
million U.S. residents who have HIV are black,
according to 2005 CDC statistics. (AP)
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