Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bay Area Reporter - December 6, 2007
Bob Roehr
Prevention Justice Mobilization, a new national coalition of individuals and organizations, organized the march, and hopes to reinvigorate advocacy for HIV prevention.
"CDC, can't you see how to stop HIV," people chanted at the rally in Woodruff Park.
"We are here because we know there is no plan to save our lives," said Philadelphia's Waheedah Shabazz-El. "We know that HIV prevention is more than just a condom. HIV is not just a virus, it is a product of social injustice."
Atlanta AIDS advocate Jeff Graham criticized "public health officials who are afraid to speak the truth about how to prevent HIV out of fear of reprisals from politicians. And service providers, myself included, who are afraid of ruffling the feathers of either those public health officials, or those politicians out of fear that our already tenuous funding will be cut if we speak the truth."
"And all of this is happening in the home of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," Graham added. "Around the world, people remark about the good job that the CDC does. But my local observation is that they don't seem to do a very good job of either controlling or preventing disease if that is HIV related."
Building upon a "CSI" theme, Graham said, "We need condoms, syringes, and information."
The advocates questioned why the CDC has not released new estimates on the number of HIV infections each year in the U.S., even after those numbers have appeared in media outlets. Some reports have said the estimate could be as high as 60,000 infections a year, half again as much as the estimate that the CDC has used for more than a decade.
The CDC claims that the data must undergo external review before it is released.
"Our current administration never lets the facts stand in the way of ideology, and many knowledgeable people are suspicious of this delay in the release of the new, likely troubling estimate of HIV incidence," said Julie Davids, executive director of the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project.
A central criticism of the activists is that the U.S. lacks a national plan to address all aspects of HIV, with measurable objectives. That is something that the U.S. government demands of all of the foreign nations it supports through the international AIDS program PEPFAR.
The coalition also has chided the Bush administration and Congress for flat funding the CDC HIV prevention budget since 1999. That has resulted in a 19 percent decrease in purchasing power of the existing budget due to inflation.
Along with the heated rhetoric, the crowd got into the spirit of the season with its version of the "Twelve Days of Christmas, A Prevention Justice Carol":
"In the AIDS epidemic, the gov'ment gave to me - no national plan, anti-gay bias, a decade of flat funding, a fast track to prison, no decent housing, roadblocks to treatment, silver virginity rings, censorship in science, discrimination, misinformation - and a country full of HIV."
Despite a telegenic protest, on a hot topic, there was nary a television camera in sight - just blocks from the international news giant CNN.
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