Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Miami Herald - November 20, 2005
Fred Tasker, ftasker@herald.com
"If we could actually test everybody, we would probably find a level trend in AIDS in those areas over the past three, four, five years," said Spencer Leib, senior epidemiologist for the HIV/AIDS Bureau of the Florida Department of Health.
The CDC report released last week, based on numbers gathered by the Florida Department of Health, said that, between 2003 and 2004, Broward AIDS cases jumped from 681 to 1,025, or 48 percent, and Dade cases jumped from 1,057 to 1,366. The numbers made Greater Fort Lauderdale the number one metropolitan area in the nation for AIDS cases per capita and Greater Miami the number two area.
Broward health officials concurred that aggressive testing increased the numbers.
"For the last year or so, we've really been trying to get more people tested," said Michael Parsons, human services program manager for the Broward County Health Department.
"The more people you test, the more your numbers will go up," Parsons said. "It's not that we're seeing more morbidity, we're just reaching out to more people."
In 2004, Broward reported conducting 24,432 HIV/AIDS tests, a 6 percent increase over 2002. Statewide, 300,000 tests were given, a 20 percent increase over 2003.
Leib also said that, in the first nine months of 2005, Broward's apparent AIDS rate dropped by 17 percent, and Miami-Dade's by 6 percent. "You don't expect to see a sharp increase followed by a sharp decrease unless something artificial is happening," he said.
In Miami-Dade, Dr. Michael Kolber, director of HIV services for the University of Miami, said the apparent contradictions are due to faulty counting.
He pointed out that, while the South Florida AIDS rate was apparently soaring, the statewide HIV rate per 100,000 population was dropping by 12 percent.
"They're saying that fewer people were newly infected but more people were progressing [from HIV to AIDS]," he said. "That's nonsense. If the testing was doing a good job, it would be finding HIV cases, not just AIDS cases."
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Herald staff writer Evan S. Benn contributed to this report.
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