Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2008. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bay Area Reporter - July 31, 2008
Cynthia Laird, c.laird@ebar.com
The CDC is also expected to release a back-calculation revealing that, for the 15-year period between 1991-2006, infection rates were approximately 25 percent to 50 percent higher than the agency's previously stated estimate of 40,000 new infections per year.
The new CDC numbers do not include data from California because its names-based reporting system is not mature enough.
The announcement is expected at the International AIDS Conference, which opens in Mexico City Sunday.
The leaked details of the report sent shockwaves through AIDS circles. The CDC issued a news release that was embargoed until Sunday morning, but the information was contained in a statement issued Friday by New York-based Housing Works, an agency dedicated to fighting AIDS and homelessness. David Thorpe, director of communications for Housing Works, told the Bay Area Reporter Friday, August 1 that he could not reveal from whom the agency received the information, but called the source "100 percent reliable."
A CDC news release attributed the higher numbers to the agency "using a more precise method for estimated annual HIV incidence, which is the number of individuals who became newly infected with HIV in a given year."
Housing Works Executive Director Charles King blasted the CDC: "The CDC report demonstrates once again, that the numbers on AIDS in the U.S. simply don't add up. This 40 percent increase in the annual incidence of HIV should serve as a bombshell wake-up call to both Senators [Barack] Obama and [John] McCain that America's response to domestic AIDS has failed."
The new data are to be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"The fact that more people in the United States are infected with HIV every year than previously thought shows that we need to be working much harder to control the epidemic in the United States," said HIV Medicine Association Chair Dr. Arlene Bardeguez.
New CDC figures are also expected to reveal rises in HIV infections among African Americans and Latinos, especially men who have sex with men. This follows a report issued Tuesday by the Black AIDS Institute that put the government's neglect of black Americans' health care into stark relief.
As the B.A.R. reported this week, the institute's report stated that there are more black Americans living with HIV than the total HIV populations in seven of the 15 countries that are the focus of the international AIDS effort known as PEPFAR.
The B.A.R. also reported this week that in San Francisco, the number of people newly diagnosed with HIV declined again last year, continuing a trend first noticed in 2003.
The B.A.R. will have more on this report, and the AIDS conference next week.
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