Report from National Black AIDS Institute

By Antoine Craigwell

Commemorating the National AIDS Awareness Day, February 7, and reiterating the 2008 statistics of the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC), the National Black AIDS Institute today issued its annual report of the State of AIDS in Black America.

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According to the Institute's report, the premier national Black AIDS service organization, the number of Black Americans, who constitute 13 percent of the U.S. population, but 45 percent of all who are HIV positive and living with AIDS, is greater than the populations of Ethiopia, Botswana, Haiti and Guyana combined.



But, the report says, drawing on a new president and legislature amenable to, and a Black America more willing to engage in discussion about HIV and AIDS issues, "could create real, lasting change in the course of the U.S. AIDS epidemic."

Announced in a press release from the Institute's Los Angeles, CA office, by Phill Wilson, the Institute's CEO, the report Making Change Real: The State of AIDS in Black America 2009, was co-written by Kai Wright and Myisha Patterson-Gatson. The report draws not only on the statistics of the CDC, but on the testimonies of epidemiological professionals, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the National Institutes of Health; and Dr. Kevin Fenton, director, National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention with the CDC; as well as individual people from different parts of the country to highlight the nationwide impact and effect of the virus.

Phil Wilson

"With our country facing so many challenges-two wars, a financial meltdown and the growing threat of environmental devastation-it may be tempting to relegate the AIDS epidemic to the back burner of national priorities. That would be a grave mistake," says Wilson.

Using charts and graphs to demonstrate the stark racial disparities, the 76-page report addresses among other issues the amount of money committed, and spent on HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment in Black communities as well as highlights the sharply increased number of Black women and young men between 13 and 29-years-old who are infected with the virus. It also calls for the establishment of National AIDS Strategy to effectively address the epidemic of HIV and AIDS in Black communities.

According to the report, the CDC's 2008 study used new technology that allowed researchers to learn more details about HIV infections, which led to a reexamination of the size and depth of the epidemic across the U.S., rounding the numbers upward and focusing more attention on the increases.

The redefined testing technology allows the CDC to time-stamp an infection, says Dr. Fenton, "It's like shifting from standard view to wide-screen HD TV," and caused researchers and scientists to go back and redevelop new estimates for the annual growth. The CDC said that the American AIDS epidemic is at least 40 percent greater than was previously believed, growing by between 55,000 and 58,000 infections each year.

"For years, HIV tests could determine only whether the virus was in a person's blood, not how long it had been there. That meant researchers couldn't differentiate a new infection - say, one that's six-months old - from an old infection - one that's six years old. And as a result, they couldn't detect with precision how fast or slow the virus was spreading, only how fast or slow health workers were diagnosing its spread," says the Institute's report.

But startlingly, the report says that Black gays across the U.S. are in "urgent need." A bar graph in the report titled, Losing a New Generation, stated that, "In 2006, Black men between the ages of 13 and 29 accounted for more new HIV infections among gay and bisexual men than any other race or age group. And more than half, or 52 percent, of all Black gay and bisexual men infected that year were under 30 years old."

The 63 percent rise of all infections among Black men who have sex with men, says Dr. Fenton, "point to an urgent need in this population."

According to the report, there is a perception among health workers of "HIV prevention fatigue," where many young people have reached a point of information saturation, "…we now know that the rapid growth of infections among young men is unique to Blacks. Among whites, for instance, new infections were more evenly spread, with men in their 30s and 40s accounting for the largest share, while men under 30 accounted for just 25 percent of new infections.

So why does it appear young white gay men are avoiding the pitfalls of their elders while young Black men are not?

This is yet another unanswered question about the Black AIDS epidemic…officials theorized…that Black gay youth are more likely to have sex with older men, and thereby put themselves at greater risk…young Black men who have sex with men choose sex partners from within smaller pools of people and, thus, once HIV is introduced it spreads quickly."

The report says that young Black gay and bisexual men do not perceive to be at greater risk for HIV, which in turn makes them less likely to find out about their HIV status and to take the necessary steps for their protection and that of others.

Women and STDs were also addressed in the report, where it says that Blacks were overrepresented among women who contracted the virus.

"Just over 60 percent of women infected in 2006 were Black, who had a rate of new infection that was almost 15 times as high as their white counterparts," the Institute's report says.

Drawing on the CDC figures, the report says that the racial disparity in AIDS deaths, for 2006, the latest year for which data is available, that Black Americans accounted for 7,426, down by 1,253 from a previous year, but still the largest proportion, more than half of all deaths from AIDS.