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ETTRICK - HIV is a silent killer.

"You can never tell if someone is infected, and they might have the virus even if they look healthy," Deidre Johnson said. "Everything you do has consequences that may change your life," she said.

Johnson knows better than most. Living with HIV for 12 years, she has paid a high toll for her trust in the wrong man, who eventually gave her the virus. Yet Johnson is alive and able tell her story. Yesterday, she spoke to students at the World AIDS Day Observance at Virginia State University.

The purpose of the event, which is hosted by Student Health And Counseling Services, is to raise awareness and warn students that HIV still is a threat to the life of those who are infected - many of them young people who are careless in their choices of sexual partners and do not protect themselves.

"Fortunately, the topic of AIDS isn't as taboo as it used to be," said Dr. Bridget H. Wilson, assistant director of the VSU Student Health Center Center. "Our students take it seriously and openly discuss it," she said.

Wilson said that since VSU has begun hosting the event six years ago, between 150 and 200 students took the opportunity to get tested for HIV at no cost each year. "The good news is, we have never had a positive case on campus, which shows that our efforts are working," she said. But Wilson added that one never knows if HIV positive students come on campus without telling anyone.

Johnson is one of those young women who fell for a man who hid his infection from her and lured her into having unprotected sex. Her then-partner, the 37-year-old said, was "gorgeous and looked healthy." They started dating when she was already the mother of a young boy, but her new lover never told her that he was a convicted drug user.

The couple moved El Paso, Texas, when she found out that she was pregnant again.

"After they did some routine medical tests, they called me back into the doctor's office," Johnson said. "The doctor sat me down, but he would not look me in the eye. Then he told me that I was HIV-positive," she said.

Johnson, who had never had a sexual transmitted disease and who had unprotected sex with only two men in her life, was in denial. A second test confirmed the first. It would be only a matter of time - on average about seven years - until her infection would lead to AIDS, still a deadly killer today.

Read more:
HIV-infected woman's warning to VSU students: Bad choice can have deadly consequences