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The statistics are staggering, but it's an issue all too easily ignored, said religious leaders gathered Saturday for the second annual local observance of National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

Nationwide, African Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, yet they represented 49 percent of new cases in 2005, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Washtenaw County, the 2008 rate of HIV/AIDS among black Washtenaw County residents was 4 per 1,000 people, compared with a rate of less than 1 per thousand for whites, according to the public health department.

But those who braved snowy roads to attend the event, held Saturday afternoon at Ypsilanti's Brown Chapel AME Church, left with a renewed sense of purpose about raising awareness and urging people to get tested.

Director Phil Volk started his Washtenaw Interfaith HIV/AIDS Network in 2004 after attending a candlelight vigil at the University of Michigan. He said he was struck by the observation made by a young, HIV-positive person, that God and religious organizations had forgotten the disease's victims.

"We're all in this together,'' he said. "Black and white, wealthy and poor. We have to remember this.''

Among speakers was Sheriff Jerry Clayton, who cited statistics illustrating the overwhelming disproportion of HIV cases in the black population.

"It hits all of us,'' he said. "But it hits some communities at different rates, for different reasons.''

"I didn't know it was so bad,'' said Johnnie Joplin, a local lay minister who attended, after hearing the numbers Clayton recited. "Wow. Our work is really cut out.''

Even if it was a painful topic, that didn't prevent the 30 or so people who came from singing, celebrating God and expressing thanks.

Music was sung by Voice of Praise, a gospel group of Wayne County Community College students, and Vellanie Ray, minister and choir director at Burning Bush Church of God and Christ in Ypsilanti.

The local HIV/AIDS Resource Center offered free confidential testing during the event, but volunteers said weather seemed to be keeping people away. Still, a few showed up for testing.

And those who attended were newly galvanized to help spread awareness of the disease and its impacts, particularly on the black community.

"Take the message you learned today,'' Clayton told people in the audience. "And go out and tell 10 people.''