Students will have a chance to be tested for HIV Tuesday, Oct. 16 in the Alfonso Elder Student Union Building from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

There is no charge for the pain-free test.

“Our goal is to make people feel comfortable and encourage more people to know their HIV status,” said Tanya Bass, a N.C. Central University public health educator in Student Health and Counseling Services. Bass is the adviser to Project SAFE (Save A Fellow Eagle), an NCCU health education service. According to Bass, students take the 20-minute tests themselves by swabbing their mouth with a cotton swab. “The test was a piece of cake,” said elementary education sophomore Shanika Scurlock.

“They also have counsellors there to talk to you even if you don’t have HIV, to help prepare you if you do have it,” Scurlock said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of new AIDS cases for black women is 20 times that of white women.

HIV/AIDS is the number- one killer of black women between the ages of 25 and 34.

An estimated 18,849 blacks under the age of 25 were diagnosed with HIV/AIDS between the 2001 and 2004.

In North Carolina, HIV infections among young black men in college increased more than 400 percent between 2000 and 2004.

In 2005, 225,815 blacks were living with HIV/AIDS.

In 2006, 286 North Carolina males and 87 females ages 13-29 were diagnosed with HIV.

Blacks are contracting HIV at twice the rate they were in the late 80s and early 90s.

Experts say the jump in infection rates is due to several factors, including poverty, intravenous drug use, a lack of adequate health care and the failure to use condoms.