CDC Releases New Data on HIV Infections 2006-2009

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released their latest analysis of HIV infections from 2006-2009 today. The full report (pdf) is available online. This is the first time the CDC has been able to estimate HIV infections from actual HIV test data, thanks to the passage of HIV names reporting legislation which has been enacted by several states (including California) in recent years. 2009 is the most recent year for which data is available so far.

A key excerpt from the press release:

According to the new estimates, there were 48,600 new HIV infections in the United States in 2006, 56,000 in 2007, 47,800 in 2008 and 48,100 in 2009.  The multi-year incidence estimates allow for a reliable examination of trends over time.  They reveal no statistically significant change in HIV incidence overall from 2006 to 2009, with an average of 50,000 for the four-year period.  In 2009, the largest number of new infections was among white MSM (11,400), followed closely by black MSM (10,800).  Hispanic MSM (6,000) and black women (5,400) were also heavily affected.   

“While we’re encouraged that prevention efforts have helped avoid overall increases in HIV infections in the United States, and have significantly reduced new infections from the peak in the mid-1980s, we have plateaued at an unacceptably high level,” said Kevin Fenton, M.D., director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention.  “Without intensified HIV prevention efforts, we are likely to face an era of rising infection rates and higher health care costs for a preventable condition that already affects more than one million people in this country.”

Some of the key take-aways from the report are:

• Overall HIV incidence in the U.S. has been relatively stable, with approximately 50,000 annual new infections

• New infections among young men who have sex with men (MSM) increased 34% between 2006 and 1009

• Young, black MSM (aged 13-29) is the only subpopulation in the U.S. to experience a statistically significant increase from 2006 through 2009
• New HIV infections increased 48% – from 4,400 in 2006 to 6,500 in 2009

• The new data confirm that HIV continues to disproportionately affect MSM of all races/ethnicities
• MSM represent 2% of the total U.S. population, but accounted for 61% all new HIV infections in 2009
• Among MSM in 2009, white MSM represented the greatest number of new HIV infections (11,400), followed closely by black MSM (10,800) and Hispanic MSM (6,000)
  

Read that line again: "MSM represent 2% of the total U.S. population, but accounted for 61% all new HIV infections in 2009." People who says HIV/AIDS is not a "gay" issue don't know what the heck they are talking about!

Black Man Perceived To Be Gay Barred From Donating Blood

Aaron Pace, a self-described effeminate straight man, was prevented from
donating blood due to his perceived sexual orientation

I have previously blogged abuut the ban on gay people from donating blood in the United States and have expressed my opinion that the ban should be lifted. The alleged rationale by the Food and Drug Administration is that a man who has had sex with another man even once since 1979 has blood which is riskier than other people's despite the fact all blood that is donated is tested by the American Red Cross for the presence of HIV antibodies and other STDs.

Now a heterosexual man named Aaron Pace, who happens to be Black and describes himself as "effeminate," has been prevented from donating blood in Gary, Indiana.

The story was first published in the Chicago Sun-Times:

“I was humiliated and embarrassed,” said Pace, 22. of Gary. “It’s not right that homeless people can give blood but homosexuals can’t. And I’m not even a homosexual.”

Pace visited Bio-Blood Components Inc. in Gary, which pays for blood and plasma donations, up to $40 a visit. But during the interview screening process, Pace said he was told he could not be a blood donor there because he “appears to be a homosexual.”

No one at Bio-Blood returned calls seeking comment, but donation centers like it, and even the American Red Cross, are still citing a nearly 30-year-old federal policy to turn away gay men from donating.

The Food and Drug Administration policy, implemented in 1983, states that men who have had sex — even once — with another man (since 1977) are not allowed to donate blood.

The policy was sparked by concerns that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was tainting the blood supply. And, back then, screening tests to identify HIV-positive blood had not yet been developed.

Today, all donated blood is tested for HIV, as well as for hepatitis B and C, syphilis and other infectious diseases, before it can be released to hospitals. This is why gay activists, blood centers including the American Red Cross, and even some lawmakers now claim the lifetime ban is “medically and scientifically unwarranted.”

I should repeat what the Los Angeles Times said last year in an editorial that "there were 4 known cases of HIV transmission out of 122 million units of blood donated between 1999 and 2007." Is that infinitesimal risk worth the discrimination against all gay men in the light of a nationwide blood shortage?

I wonder if Marcus Bachmann would be allowed to give blood at Bio-Blood?

Today is National HIV Testing Day: 30 Reasons To Get Tested

Today, June 27th, is National HIV Testing Day. 2011 is also the 30th year of the AIDS epidemic, which was first identified in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles County Department of Health has distributed "30 Years. 30 Reasons To Get Tested" on a website called EraseDoubt

1.      I didn’t use a condom.

2.      I thought we were monogamous, but I was wrong.

3.      My boyfriend and I want to share our results with each other.

4.      If I know my status, I can move on with my life.

5.      I know what I did last summer. I just don’t remember who.

6.      I’ve had an STD and I’m more vulnerable to contracting HIV.

7.      I want to have kids and need to know how to protect my baby.

8.      I respect myself. I respect my partner.

9.      I’d be lying if I told you that I normally don’t hook up.

10.  I shared needles back in my party days.   

11.  I’ve had multiple sex partners.

12.  I thought he would be more than a one night stand, but he wasn’t.

13.  I can no longer use my fear of needles as an excuse not to get tested because there are needle free options now. 

14.  We should have talked about it and not just assumed we were both HIV negative.

15.  Just because.

16.  My husband had an affair and I just need to be sure.

17.  My blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, and diet aren’t the only things I should be worried about.

18.  It would bother me if I gave someone HIV.

19.  I don’t remember his name and who knows what else I don’t know about him.

20.  He said the condom wasn’t big enough and I believed him, so we didn’t use it.

21.  I shared needles getting my tattoos and piercings.

22.  I’m out, proud and sexually active.

23.  In about 20 minutes or so, I can finally stop worrying and just know.

24.  One thing led to another and another…

25.  I love him enough to know my status.

26.  He said using a condom would ruin the mood.

27.  It’s been 6 months since my last test, so it’s time.

28.  Too many margaritas, a few more tequila shots, sneaking out of the club with what’s his name, and a night I don’t really remember.

29.  My boyfriend said he would get one too.

30.  Whatever the HIV test result, I know that I’ll be okay.

Get Tested. Know Your Status. Erase Doubt!

Today is 30th Anniversary of AIDS

This weekend is the 30th anniversary of the discovery of what became known as AIDS in Los Angeles, CA in June 1981. The Black AIDS Institute says "30 years is enuf!"

Ha/tip to LGBTPOV

HIV Treatment *IS* HIV Prevention

There's an interesting twist to the news that HIV+ people on anti-retroviral medication have surprisingly low chances of passing the virus on to their sexual partners in this weekend's New York Times column by Charles Blow.

Blow makes the point that the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) has been a victim of both state and federal budget cutting and points out the long-term fiscal irresponsibility of such actions.

According to data from the ADAP Advocacy Association: as of last week, the number of people on ADAP waiting lists had risen to 7,873; between April 2009 and April 2011, 14 states reduced the number and types of drugs they would pay for. A number of states have stiffened financial eligibility requirements, capped enrollment or removed some people already enrolled. Other states are considering doing so.


This is particularly problematic since the National ADAP Monitoring Project’s annual report, released in March, showed that those most dependent on the program are some of society’s most vulnerable. About a third of all people diagnosed with AIDS are enrolled in ADAPs, three-quarters of them had incomes of less than 200 percent of the national poverty level, 61 percent were uninsured, and 55 percent were black or Hispanic.


But as the recession put more patients in need, federal and state aid didn’t keep track. From 2007 to 2010, the number of people using ADAPs jumped by a third, but federal and state funds specifically appropriated for it grew by just 3 percent and 18 percent, respectively.


Not only is it morally reprehensible to restrict or deny life-saving drugs to those who need them (talk about death panels), it is a colossal miscalculation of public health policy, not to mention fiscally irresponsible.


The new findings should help change a paradigm that’s badly in need of changing. Treatment benefits the healthy as well as the sick. It not only prolongs and improves the lives of those who are H.I.V.-positive, but also is a prophylactic for those who aren’t. Everyone wins.


It’s time to expand ADAPs, not diminish them.

It's just amazing how we spend health care dollars in this country. It simply is not rational to be cutting funds for  prevention of any disease, especially when prevention is always cheaper than treatment. In the case of HIV, treatment can also improve prevention of future infections so it should be a no-brainer to increase, not decrease such expenditures. Unless you live in Mississippi, of course.

Human Rights Watch Issues Report On Mississippi(!)

The state of Mississippi has long been an embarrassment to the rest of the country, but now the international non-governmental organization (NGO) Human Rights Watch has made it official by issuing a report detailing and decrying the way the state deals with people who are either LGBT or have HIV or both.

From the Executive Summary of "Rights At Risk":

Throughout Mississippi, people living with HIV, their advocates, health providers and public officials describe an extreme stigma surrounding HIV that is, for many, more frightening than the disease itself. Human Rights Watch found that Mississippi laws and policies promote prejudice and discrimination against those vulnerable, and perceived to be vulnerable, to HIV, thereby contributing to the problem. Numerous legal provisions, including constitutional amendments, discriminate against homosexuals and state sex education laws marginalize lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth. In Mississippi, the criminal law penalizes those with HIV for failing to disclose their positive status, an approach that public health experts deem likely to undermine, rather than promote, the public health.

Mississippi’s sex education policies also play a harmful role in the state’s HIV epidemic. The state has the highest rates of sexually transmitted disease (STD) and teen pregnancy in the nation and alarming rates of HIV infection among young black men who have sex with men (MSM). Yet Mississippi’s legislature remains stubbornly committed to failed messages of abstinence in sex education, ignoring evidence that such approaches have little effect on reducing HIV or STD transmission. Despite the fact that students in Mississippi are having sex earlier than in any other state, the state suppresses information about condom use and effectiveness in sex education, denying youth access to accurate and relevant health information that can prevent HIV infection.

The sex education curricula in Mississippi also mandates negative messages about “homosexual activities,” creating hostile school environments for LGBT youth and interfering with their right to health. Combined with other state laws that discriminate against homosexuals, Mississippi promotes a culture of homophobia that, according to state public health officials, endangers the health of gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men by keeping them away from HIV testing and treatment services.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Southern US has been particularly devastating for minority communities.Nowhere is the dramatic racial impact of the epidemic more apparent than in the state of Mississippi, where African-Americans are only 37.5 percent of the population, but comprise 76 percent of those newly infected with HIV. Mississippi’s failure to embrace evidence-based approaches in the face of increasing health threats to minority populations conflicts with fundamental principles of human rights.

An alarming rise in HIV infection among young black men who have sex with men recently prompted an investigation by federal and state health authorities, who recommended implementation of comprehensive sex education at an early age in order to increase awareness of risk and to promote condom use as a proven method of prevention. These recommendations have been utterly ignored in the public schools despite evidence that once infected these young men are unlikely to access adequate health care. Similarly, though African-American women have the second-highest HIV infection rate in the state, Mississippi’s “Just Wait” abstinence campaign does not provide evidence-based HIV prevention education to this very vulnerable population.

The factors identified in this report are not the only contributors to the HIV epidemic in Mississippi, an impoverished state with poor rates of overall health, education, and development. Stigma and discrimination, fueled by community attitudes, religious beliefs, and other societal forces are also contributing factors. But government action plays a significant role, and the harmful policies highlighted here undermine efforts to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic and disregard national and international guidelines on best practices for effective management of the disease. These policies combine to create a high-risk environment where it is difficult for many people to avoid HIV infection and to access life-saving treatment and support. If there is to be meaningful progress in access to HIV services, Mississippi’s obligation to protect public health and human rights should be the immediate focus of both federal and state governments.

Hat/tip to Todd Heywood's reporting on this report at the Michigan Messenger.