AIDS Rate for Gay Men Climbs
Los Angeles Times
Thomas H. Maugh II
DECEMBER 2, 2004
Released on World AIDS Day, CDC’s report of US HIV/AIDS diagnoses rates for 2000-2003 showed an overall 1 percent growth rate for new infections, large increases among men who have sex with men (MSM), and pervasive racial disparities. CDC maintains that about 40,000 new HIV infections occur each year in the United States, a figure reached in the mid-1990s.
Infections among MSM increased by 11 percent, a number offset by decreases among injection drug users. MSM accounted for 44 percent of new diagnoses. CDC data released this week showed syphilis - viewed as an indicator of safe-sex practices - was up for the third year in a row after a decade of decline. The years that have passed since the epidemic’s initial ravages, together with complacency arising from the availability of effective AIDS drugs, has produced an increase in risky sex practices, officials said.
"We need to pay close attention to this population and find new ways to intervene," said Dr. Ronald O. Valdiserri, deputy director of CDC’s HIV prevention program. "This is not a trend we want to ignore."
Though they represent just 13 percent of nation’s population, African Americans comprised 51 percent of new diagnoses. Black men had seven times the infection rate of white men and three times the rate of Latino men. Black women accounted for 69 percent of new female diagnoses - 18 times that of white women and five times the Latina rate. US Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson called the disease’s impact among women of color "quite sobering."
"We have a ways to go before we reach [that] mark," Valdiserri said of the government’s goal of halving new US infections by 2005. CDC estimates 850,000-950,000 Americans now live with HIV/AIDS, with some 280,000 unaware they are HIV-infected. "It’s simply unacceptable that so many people continue to be infected by this virus," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of CDC.
The report was based on 32 states that have detailed and names-based HIV reporting and account for about half of all US HIV/AIDS cases. Though the report excludes California and New York, Valdiserri said CDC believes the new estimates are an accurate reflection of the national epidemic.