Credit: Time Inc. Studios
|
In a new not-yet-published federal study, official estimates of the number of American infected with HIV each year are expected to dramatically increase. And African Americans are, once again, expected to account for the majority. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has closely guarded the findings of the new study, but AIDS researchers and service providers have been speculating for weeks about its outcome and disagree only on how high the new numbers will go.
In an effort to address the disease in our communities, the CDC recently announced it will hold a press conference on Monday, December 3 to unveil five intervention programs. The agency also said the conference will feature key research that will be presented at the 2007 National HIV Prevention next month in Atlanta, and that African Americans are disproportionately affected by HIV. In fact, the agency said African Americans account for about half of the more than 1 million Americans living with HIV and about 40 percent of all deaths. It is not clear if the CDC will release numbers during the press conference.
“There has been quite a bit of buzz about this recently and, yes, we are developing new [HIV ]incidence estimates,” said Kevin Fenton, director of the agency’s HIV/AIDS prevention bureau, at a Nov. 16 briefing. Fenton said the study will offer “different estimates than have been published previously” but refused to discuss it further until a “robust external scrutiny” of the findings is complete. That external review will take “at least a few months,” CDC spokesperson Jennifer Ruth later explained.
The study will alter the official HIV count because it marks a change in how CDC tracks the epidemic, Ruth said. Until now, CDC has tracked the number of people who test positive each year and extrapolated from that an estimate of the total number infected—putting the epidemic’s annual growth at around 40,000 for the last several years. It couldn’t, however, differentiate between someone who was infected, say, six months before getting tested and someone who was infected six years ago, but delayed getting a test. That’s a crucial distinction, because it means health officials didn’t actually know how fast or slow infections were spreading. With the new system, they will.
“The good news is that the new technology used in this system will provide us with a better picture of HIV infections in the U.S. than ever before,” said Ruth. “We will be able to identify the leading edge of the epidemic. ... Over time, we believe this will allow us to better direct and measure progress in populations at highest risk.” African Americans accounted for roughly half of all people who tested positive at the CDC’s last published estimate, for 2005. Among women, African Americans were nearly two-thirds of those who tested positive that year. “The more we learn about the epidemic today, the more clear it is that Black people are bearing the brunt of this problem,” says Phill Wilson, director of the Black AIDS Institute.
What do you think it will take to bring our rates of infection down? Share your thoughts below. |
