Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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The New York Times- September 11, 2007
Sewell Chan
Over a five-year period, the number of new H.I.V. diagnoses in men under the age of 30 who have sex with other men increased by 33 percent, to 499 in 2006 from 374 in 2001. During the same period, the infection rate for men over 30 decreased by 22 percent.
The group with the fastest-growing rates of H.I.V. infection was made up of men between the ages of 13 and 19, for whom H.I.V. diagnoses doubled during between 2001 and 2006, according to preliminary data from the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city's health commissioner, offered a blunt assessment of the data.
"We're headed in the wrong direction," he said in a statement. "Unless young men reduce the number of partners they have, and protect themselves and their partners by using condoms more consistently, we will face another wave of suffering and death from H.I.V. and AIDS."
Dr. Frieden's statement included statements of support from leaders of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, Gay Men of African Descent and the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center.
The data revealed significant racial and ethnic disparities in H.I.V. infection rates.
In 2006, among all men who had sex with men, blacks received twice as many H.I.V. diagnoses as whites (232 versus 101), and Hispanics reported 55 percent more than whites (157 versus 101). The disparity was even more striking among adolescents; more than 90 percent of the men under age 20 who had sex with men under and were diagnosed with H.I.V. in 2006 were black or Hispanic (81 out of 87).
Every borough except Staten Island saw, between 2001 and 2006, an H.I.V. increase among men under 30 who have sex with other men. The largest increases occurred in Queens (49 percent) and Manhattan (57 percent). The increase in Manhattan was concentrated in East and Central Harlem (up 115 percent, from 26 to 56 cases), and in the Chelsea and Clinton areas (up 56 percent, from 25 to 39 cases).
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