AIDS rates up significantly for U.S. blacks

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  • HIV is increasingly a "disease of black and brown people," government study finds
  • By the end of the day today, more than 20 African-American women will be newly infected with HIV[more]

AIDS has tightened its grip on the nation's black community, with vastly higher rates of HIV diagnoses among non-Hispanic blacks than among whites or Hispanics, according to a report released Wednesday.The study, released on World AIDS Day, is the first government analysis of 125,800 HIV diagnoses from 2000 to 2003 in 32 states -- not including populous New York and California -- that confidentially report HIV diagnoses to the federal government using patients' names. Missouri is among the states reporting. The epidemic is stable with roughly 40,000 new HIV cases each year and as many as 950,000 people living with HIV/AIDS. But HIV diagnoses increased 5 percent among men overall and 11 percent among gay men. Because critical states don't yet report diagnoses by name, the evidence isn't conclusive. But it was foreshadowed by three years of rising syphilis rates among gay and bisexual men. "We cannot say with certainty that this represents an increase in new infections," says Ronald Valdiserri of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "But we continue to be concerned about it." In the U.S., 51 percent of all HIV diagnoses were among blacks, who make up 13 percent of the population. Black men accounted for the highest rate of new HIV diagnoses, 103.5 per 100,000 people, seven times that of white men and triple the rate among Latinos. Among black women, a rate of 53 diagnoses for every 100,000 people was 18 times the rate for white women and five times the rate for Latinas. [more]

  • Pictured above: A Malaysian AIDS Council volunteer displays a poster in front of a Muslim couple at a public train station in Kuala Lumpur. In the U.S., as in Malaysia and much of the world, the AIDS situation is worsening,
  • ``African American HIV/AIDS Summit'' -- Esteemed Leaders Unite to Break the Code of Silence [more]
  • Ninety-eight percent of all women diagnosed with AIDS in Georgia are African-American, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [more] and [more]
  • Congresswoman calls for a national AIDS summit [more]