CLEVELAND -- HIV/AIDS is the worst global epidemic in history. It kills 8,000 people every day, statistics show.

NewsChannel5's Danita Harris reported that would be like wiping out the entire city of Elyria in one week. What used to be known as a white, gay man's disease now infiltrates the black community at an alarming rate. The black woman is its main target.

Black women account for 72 percent of all new HIV/AIDS cases among women in the United States, Harris reported.

These numbers have faces like Francine Mann, who experienced a myriad of emotions upon hearing her results.

"I left and I went out into this garden and I just cried, I cried," she said. "But the thing about it , I wasn't crying for myself I was crying for my husband because I knew that he had given it to me."

AIDS RESOURCES

Harris reported poverty is one reason the disease is so prevalent among black women. Cleveland is No. 1 for poverty. In most Cleveland neighborhoods, there are no billboards targeted toward black women and HIV/AIDS. There is no access to free condoms within walking distance and no inexpensive ones to buy at the corner store. Harris added that this translates into the lack of resources to obtain condoms, and therefore they are not used.

Harris reported another problem is that the country's leaders seem to be unaware of the severity of HIV/AIDS among black women in the United States. This was evident at last year's vice-presidential debate in Cleveland.

The following question was posed: "Black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their counterparts. What should the government's role be in helping to end the growth of this epidemic?"

Dick Cheney responded: "I had not heard those numbers with respect to African-American women. I was not aware that it was that severe an epidemic."

Cleveland's Commissioner of Health Anjou Parekh is aware of the growing problem and said the city is trying to improve its efforts to reach the black community.

"We are recognizing that we need to do a better job, and we're actively working to that end. In the past few years we've funded new programs, new initatives that specifically reach African-American women. This is something that has changed over the years and we're excited about that."

In the city of Cleveland, there are currently over 2,100 reported cases of people living with HIV/AIDS. Twenty-six percent of them are women and 62 percent of them are black.

Kimberlin Dennis lives with the disease and said fear contributes to the high percentage of black women with HIV/AIDS.

"People don't want to know because they don't want to deal with that devastation," Dennis said. "You know, the thought of knowing. If you know then what am I going to do or can I tell someone, can I continue working, can I continue living?"

Tracey Jones, associate executive director of the AIDS Task Force of Greater Cleveland, said the main responsibility of dealing with this chronic disease lies within the women.

"I think it's really problematic that we're just not willing to ask people questions," said Jones. "It's your responsibility if you are the person that's choosing to engage in sex with another person, to ask them about their sexual practices and make sure that the person knows you are adamant about protection every single time you have sex."

Jones also believes the lack of communication about sexuality within the black community has contributed to the increasing number of HIV/AIDS cases in the black community.

"(There is) no discussion about HIV and AIDS because that means if you're discussing HIV you've done something. One of the stigmas that are attached to HIV is you are somehow unclean. You have somehow received this as punishment for something that you've done. But the reality is anybody and everybody is at risk of HIV," said Jones.

In her first public confession, Vivian Smith talked about the pain of being isolated from her family.

"I have family members when it happened, who have pushed me away because they were afraid of me,” Smith said. “And to this day, my own sister is afraid of me because I have the virus."

Louis Farmer, coordinator of Positively Sexual, hears those types of stories all the time. He conducts workshops for HIV-positive individuals and their caregivers at the AIDS task force.

"People will immediately judge a black woman, sometimes assuming she must have been in high-risk behavior," Farmer said. "When the reality is, she may have caught it from a boyfriend, a husband, a single partner. The bottom line is that these are women who come in multitudes of shades with multitudes of problems just like any other sister."