As evidenced by the increasing number of people remembered at GospelFest, the impact of AIDS and HIV is increasing in the Harvard community.

According to Frazier, this impact must be measured not only by the number of students infected with HIV, but also by those affected by HIV. While one infection for every 500 students seems a small figure, Frazier estimates that for each person infected with HIV, there are two or three others who are affected.

Harvard AIDS activists express concern about the impact of the rate of infection among people under age 22.

"We are losing people in their early productive and reproductive years," Johnson says. "We have to factor that loss into our vision of the 21st century, and it is a cost factor that becomes weighty for society as a whole."

Kasper says this total societal cost "adds to the significance of HIV testing in a young community like Harvard."

AIDS & HIV FACTS SHEET

One in four new HIV infections occurs in people under age 22.

AIDS is the leading cause of death of all Americans aged 25 to 44.

70 percent of those infected do not know their HIV status.

In the past year, on average, one American was newly diagnosed with AIDS every seven minutes.

An estimated 35,000 Mass, residents are infected with HIV and four to five more become infected each day.

While few women were infected with HIV a decade ago, they represented 39 percent of all new HIV infections in 1995.

In 1994, one in every three deaths among African-American men between 25 and 44 years old was due to HIV-related illness.

Source: AIDS Action Committee of Massachussets, Inc