The District Chronicles

Issue date: 8/17/08 Section: Cover

MEXICO CITY - When it comes to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, the federal government has been running a numbers game. That was verified this month when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged that it has been underestimating the number of HIV cases each year by 40 percent.

That means instead of 40,000 cases annually - the CDC standard estimate - there were, in fact, 56,300 new infections.

AIDS activists have been saying for years that the CDC understated the extent of the epidemic. But government officials turned a deft ear, haughtily saying they were the experts and community activists, who were closer to the community, did not know what they were talking about.

Phill Wilson, the executive director of the Los Angeles-based Black AIDS Institute, was one of those voices screaming to be heard.

"The CDC's announcement makes me very angry," he said after learning about the new figures. "Had the government listened to the Black AIDS Institute and others - had they respected what we were telling them - there is a possibility that we could have been able to prevent some of these infections."

If the numbers game stopped there, it would be bad enough. But it doesn't. Equally disturbing is the gap in global and domestic spending on AIDS.

"Over the last five years, the White House and Congress have increased spending on HIV prevention, treatment and support programs for low-income countries dramatically - at the same time that domestic spending has remained all but flat," concludes a report by the Black AIDS Institute titled, "Left Behind."

A chart in the report makes the point. In 2005, U.S. spending on AIDS globally increased by 21 percent while domestic spending on AIDS remained unchanged. The following year, global spending increased by 22 percent and domestic spending decreased by.4 percent. In 2007, international spending jumped by 46 percent while domestic spending increased by only 2.5 percent. This year, global spending is expected to increase by 34 percent while domestic spending inches up by 1.2 percent.

"Black communities throughout the United States continue to bear a disproportionate share of the AIDS epidemic," the Left Behind report states. "More than 500,000 Black Americans are living with HIV, and more than 20,000 or more become infected each year. Blacks living with HIV have an age-adjusted death rate more than twice as high as HIV-infected Whites."

Nearly one of every two people living with HIV in the U.S. is Black. AIDS is the leading cause of death among Black women between 25-34 years and the second-leading cause of death in Black men between 35-44 years of age. Black women are 23 times more likely to be diagnosed with AIDS than White women.

Continued...

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