New Yorkers have given Dr. Monica Sweeney, the city Health Department’s assistant commissioner for HIV/Aids Prevention and Control, an unofficial, and rather cheeky, title.
“They call me the condom queen,” she said.
But at meetings, parties or just walking down the street, she often hears, “There’s the Condom Lady.”
“I love it,” she said. “I want people to think of condoms . . . They’re the best way to protect your health when you’re not in a mutually monogamous relationship.”
New York is the nation’s HIV/AIDS epicenter, with close to 100,000 infected residents.
“The past few years, HIV has been increasing among men who have sex with men under the age of 30,” Sweeney noted.
The city began offering free prophylactics in 1971 and produced an NYC-brand condom last year.
“We’re giving away about 3.4 million condoms a month,” said Sweeney, who won a Liberty Medal last fall for her 20 years of educating Bedford-Stuyvesant residents on AIDS prevention and health care before taking her city post 16 months ago.
An internist, she became an HIV/AIDS activist after treating a man whose wife learned he was HIV-positive only when he was dying. The woman spent a year terrified before learning she wasn’t infected.
“I still hear her, still see her,” Sweeney said. “Even on bad days, I know why I get up and come to work.”