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Florida Advocacy Group Provides Immediate HIV Testing

Latinos Salud is an advocacy group that has provided rapid HIV testing, safe sex education and free condoms since the South Beach AIDS Project shut down.

On Tuesday evening, just outside of Twist nightclub in Miami Beach, Jose Javier and Mikael Kiezer waited for Victor Gonzalez under the gleam of the club’s red neon sign.

A few minutes before 10:30 p.m., when Gonzalez appeared, Kiezer pulled a yellow folding sign out of the van parked in front of the club and propped it open to signal the start of the night’s work. “Free and Fast HIV Testing,” it read.

The trio wasn’t headed into Twist to party — they work for the non-profit Latinos Salud. They would spend the night raising awareness about how to prevent the spread of HIV while offering rapid testing and handing out condoms outside one of Miami Beach’s well-known clubs. Their busiest time for testing, they said, is midnight or later.

Gonzalez stepped inside the large van where a gray folding table and two chairs were set up for testing, and spread out the forms they use to report test results to the state health department. Javier fiddled with his phone to get music playing from the speaker near the van and soon the catchy pop songs of summer were playing outside of the club as well.

 

 

Daniel Luzer is GOVERNING's news editor.
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