WASHINGTON, Nov 30 (AFP) - The United States is losing ground again in its fight against AIDS with blacks, particularly African-American women, suffering most from the resurgent spread of the virus.
Health experts blame a lack of education resources while American adults are showing growing complacency to the risks they run.
The number of cases of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) fell by 50 percent from 1993 to 2001 before rising two percent in 2002, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which releases its latest figures Wednesday.
The number of deaths hit an annual peak of 52,000 in 1995 before seeing major falls with the advent of new medications. Those falls continued through 2001, but the following year saw a rise to 16,371 AIDS deaths, according to the CDC.
More than 500,000 people are now believed to have died from AIDS in the United States, with almost 900,000 estimated to be infected with the virus.
"It's a pretty bad situation," said Sherry Kaplan, coordinator for the Center for Positive Connection in Miami, a private help centre in one of the worst-hit regions of the United States.
"It's a tragedy that there is no wake-up call, that we have our own epidemic going on here in the US and the money isn't coming in, that there is no proper education prevention," added Kaplan, who has been HIV-positive for 17 years.
Kaplan said that people now show "a more casual attitude" to sex because they believe medication will help them with AIDS.
The growing use of treatments for male sexual dysfunction has contributed to the new spread of AIDS.
There has been a 17 percent increase in cases in Florida among people aged over 55. "It's a new phenomenon," Kaplan declared.
"Viagra is steering more infection because these men can now have sex and these (divorced and widowed) women don't know how to negotiate condom use, or they would never think that a man over 55 would give to it to them."
"There are also people out there, probably a small proportion, who want to get it because of the benefits," she added. People with HIV get increased welfare and housing payments in Florida.
While AIDS now hits all sections of the United States, minority groups, particularly African-American women, are at particular risk, according to CDC figures.
More than 50 percent of new cases recorded in the United States in recent years are black, and about 72 percent of those are women.
Rosemary Ramroop, 40, said she was infected by her ex-husband who did not tell her he had AIDS. She discovered the devastating news after the birth of her second daughter, who was also infected.
"A lot of women are in my situation. You find out after the fact. It's an issue of trust. When you get married, you trust your husband but you cannot trust his past. He knew he had it a year before he got married to me."
Ramroop now works for a Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, on an outreach programme for AIDS sufferers. She has since remarried and had two more children who are HIV negative.
For many years, AIDS education has been mainly targeted at women rather than men who refuse to use condoms and then infect their partners, she said.
"The women are more often the victim," said Ramroop.
John Bartlett, the head of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University, said that many Americans do not know they have AIDS.
He said while it is difficult to get people to change their sexual behaviour, about one third of the estimated cases in the United States do not know they are infected.
"That's sad because those people don't get the extensive prevention message and they are the ones that are likely to transmit it."
Experts say the most effective solution would be to have more widespread testing. But there are major legal obstacles to this. Legal authorisation is required for a test but many people refuse this, said the professor.
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