U.S. Blacks, if a Nation, Would Rank High on AIDS

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NY Times
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Published: July 30, 2008

If black America were a country, it would rank 16th in the world in the number of people living with the AIDS virus, the Black AIDS Institute, an advocacy group, reported Tuesday.

The report, financed in part by the Ford Foundation and the Elton John AIDS Foundation, provides a startling new perspective on an epidemic that was first recognized in 1981.

Nearly 600,000 African-Americans are living with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and up to 30,000 are becoming infected each year. When adjusted for age, their death rate is two and a half times that of infected whites, the report said. Partly as a result, the hypothetical nation of black America would rank below 104 other countries in life expectancy.

Those and other disparities are “staggering,” said Dr. Kevin A. Fenton, who directs H.I.V. prevention efforts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency responsible for tracking the epidemic in the United States.

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1. If U.S. Blacks were a nation they could receive U.S. dollars for AIDS

President Bush Historic $48 Billion Funding Of Global AIDS Bill

July 31, 2008 12:29 a.m. EST

Nidhi Sharma - AHN News Writer

Washington D.C. (AHN) - President George Bush on Wednesday approved $48 billion for fighting AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis around the world for next five years.

The amount authorized for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the successful U.S. global AIDS program, is $18 billion more than what Bush had requested. The measure will triple funding for these three diseases. It would replace and expand the current $15 billion program started by the President in 2003. That act expires at the end of September.

The new goal is to prevent 12 million new HIV infections, treat more than two million with AIDS drugs, support care for 12 million, and train at least 140,000 new health care workers. According to a statement by the White House, the president said it "is the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease in human history."

The funds will assist in buying lifesaving anti-retroviral treatment for nearly 1.7 million people from Asia to eastern Europe. The new program will also drop a requirement for one-third of the anti-AIDS funds to be used to promote sexual abstinence and will lifts a ban on HIV-positive foreigners entering the United States.