HIV cases decline for US black women
2012-12-20 12:04
Atlanta - Fewer black women in the United States are being
infected with HIV, but the number of young gay and bisexual men infected is
rising, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday.
Between 2008 and 2010, the number of newly infected black
women dropped 21%, according to the CDC report. Yet despite the decline, they
still accounted for 70% of all new HIV cases among women, the federal health
agency said.
The rate of new infections for black women was 20 times
higher than the rate for white women, the CDC said.
The number of new infections among young gay and bisexual
men increased by 22% during that same two-year period, the CDC said.
The number of new HIV infections diagnosed annually in the
overall US population remained unchanged between 2008 and 2010 at about 47 500,
according to health officials.
Public information campaigns on HIV prevention and testing
seem to be working in lowering the number of new infections among
African-American women, said Joseph Prejean, chief of the Behavioral and
Clinical Surveillance Branch in the CDC's division of HIV/Aids Prevention in Atlanta.
"We are encouraged to see some declines among
African-American women," Prejean told Reuters. "They've been one of
the most severely affected populations. We're cautiously optimistic that this
could be part of a longer-term trend."
Young people
Among young gay and bisexual men, efforts to fight HIV have
not been as effective, possibly because of advances in treatment for AIDS, the
immune disorder caused by HIV, Prejean said.
"We do realise that many men who have sex with men do
probably underestimate their personal risk and believe that treatment advances
minimise the health threat," Prejean said.
Even though treatment can prolong the life of an Aids
patient, Prejean cautioned that "their life really does change. They then
begin to take medication and will take medication for the rest of their
lives," he said.
HIV is an incurable infection that costs $400 000 to treat
over a lifetime, CDC Director Dr Thomas Frieden said last month after another
government report showed more than half of young Americans infected with HIV
were not aware they had it.
Young people ages 13 to 24 account for 26% of all new HIV
infections in the United States, the earlier CDC report said.
The report released on Wednesday said nearly two-thirds of
new HIV infections in 2010 resulted from men having sex with other men. Young
black men who have sex with men account for more new infections than any other
subgroup, government health officials said.
"Because gay men account for 66 percent of all new
infections, we must increase the focus of our prevention programs for gay men,
particularly young and black gay men," said Michael Ruppal, executive
director of The AIDS Institute.
- Reuters
