WTF? Study Finds H.I.V. Infection Is 40% Higher Than Estimated-US significantly underreported.

[spanone]

forty percent HIGHER ?

you know, just when you think there could be nothing else from the criminals in charge

~snip~MEXICO CITY — The United States has significantly underreported the number of new H.I.V. infections occurring nationally each year, with a study released here on Saturday showing that the annual infection rate is 40 percent higher than previously estimated.

The study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that 56,300 people became newly infected with H.I.V in 2006, compared with the 40,000 figure the agency has cited as the recent annual incidence of the disease.

The findings confirm that H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, has its greatest effect among gay and bisexual men of all races (53 percent of all new infections) and among African-American men and women.

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Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat California and chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, was critical of the Bush administration. “H.I.V. prevention has been underfunded and too often hindered by politics and ideology,” Mr. .Waxman said in a statement released Saturday.

Mr. Waxman said he would soon hold hearings on why health officials had “had less and less money to actually get these programs to the communities that need them.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/health/03aids.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

[Warpy]

1. They are pretending that "abstinence only" works

Obviously, it does not.

It's just another way this administration is killing people.

[spanone]

2. it's unfuckingbelievable

[defendandprotect]

3. They're also pretending that we don't have a lot of bi-sexuality among males . . .

[pinto]

4. My take:

A number of factors at play here, I think. For a long time # of new infections annually was a "guesstimate" extrapolated from # of AIDS cases. Better data gathering and analysis has been instituted since '96. It's probably been at that incidence level for a while.

People working in prevention have been frustrated with the static 40,000 (now 56,000?) barrier, despite some innovative work (abstinence only stuff aside.) And with the estimate that 25% of Americans infected don't know it and don't test. They find out, sadly, when something happens and they go to an ER or their doc. It's an Oh shit moment, for many. They've been infected for a while at that point.

There are fewer "boots on the ground' than in the early days of the epidemic, especially among communities of color, monolingual Spanish speaking communities, transient communities. It's changing, but it's a catch up game at this point. Level funding or funding cuts have hampered new programs, new approaches. "AIDS fatigue" may be a part of this as well, especially after the advent of multi-drug cocktails in '96.

blatant cut 'n paste from a post I made in another thread about this. :hi:

It'll be interesting to hear what the CDC has to say in its full report tomorrow.

[flashl]

5. U.S. Blacks, if a Nation, Would Rank High on AIDS

NY Times

If black America were a country, it would rank 16th in the world in the number of people living with the AIDS virus, the Black AIDS Institute, an advocacy group, reported Tuesday.

The report, financed in part by the Ford Foundation and the Elton John AIDS Foundation, provides a startling new perspective on an epidemic that was first recognized in 1981.

Nearly 600,000 African-Americans are living with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and up to 30,000 are becoming infected each year. When adjusted for age, their death rate is two and a half times that of infected whites, the report said. Partly as a result, the hypothetical nation of black America would rank below 104 other countries in life expectancy.

Those and other disparities are “staggering,” said Dr. Kevin A. Fenton, who directs H.I.V. prevention efforts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency responsible for tracking the epidemic in the United States.

If U.S. Blacks were a nation would they receive U.S. dollars for AIDS? It seems all they can and do offer Blacks as a solution is abstinence.

President Bush Historic $48 Billion Funding Of Global AIDS Bill

Washington D.C. (AHN) - President George Bush on Wednesday approved $48 billion for fighting AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis around the world for next five years.

The amount authorized for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the successful U.S. global AIDS program, is $18 billion more than what Bush had requested. The measure will triple funding for these three diseases. It would replace and expand the current $15 billion program started by the President in 2003. That act expires at the end of September.

The new goal is to prevent 12 million new HIV infections, treat more than two million with AIDS drugs, support care for 12 million, and train at least 140,000 new health care workers. According to a statement by the White House, the president said it "is the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease in human history."

The funds will assist in buying lifesaving anti-retroviral treatment for nearly 1.7 million people from Asia to eastern Europe. The new program will also drop a requirement for one-third of the anti-AIDS funds to be used to promote sexual abstinence and will lifts a ban on HIV-positive foreigners entering the United States.