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Plagues,
Pestilences and Diseases
More HIV/AIDS Cases than ever in US
* From correspondents in Washington
* From: AFP
* June 03, 2011 5:41AM
THIRTY years after the AIDS epidemic first surfaced, more people
than ever before in the United States - more than 1.1 million -
are living with HIV, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says.
The longevity of AIDS patients is widely attributed to the success
of antiretroviral drugs which became widespread in the 1990s, but
the rise in cases presents new risks for spreading HIV, the CDC
said overnight.
"Currently, more than 1.1 million people in the United States live
with HIV, and as this number increases, so does the risk of HIV
transmission," said CDC chief Thomas Frieden.
"Today, the most infections are among people under 30 - a new
generation that has never known a time without effective HIV
treatments and who may not fully understand the significant health
threat HIV poses."
The CDC's latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report was issued
three decades after its June 5, 1981 edition that described
unusual cases of pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma in five young men
in Los Angeles.
"This report later was acknowledged as the first published
scientific account of what would become known as human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency
syndrome (AIDS)," the CDC said.
According to the most recent figures, 1,178,350 people in the US
were living with HIV at the end of 2008, the CDC said.
Worldwide, about 33.3 million people were living with HIV at the
end of 2009.
Since the epidemic first surfaced, nearly 600,000 people have died
of AIDS in the US, the CDC said.
"Over the last three decades, prevention efforts have helped
reduce new infections and treatment advances have allowed people
with HIV to live longer, healthier lives," said Mr Frieden.
"But as these improvements have taken place, our nation's
collective sense of crisis has waned.
"Far too many Americans underestimate their risk of infection or
believe HIV is no longer a serious health threat, but they must
understand that HIV remains an incurable infection."
The number of new AIDS cases reported annually peaked in 1992,
with 75,457 that year.
Three years later, in 1995, the United States saw its highest
number of deaths in a single year from AIDS - 50,628.
After that, antiretroviral drugs were introduced and fatalities
began to fall, levelling out at an average of 38,279 AIDS
diagnoses and 17,489 deaths per year from 1999 to 2008, the CDC
said.
In the US, gay men continue to account for the majority of new
cases at more than half of all new infections, mainly among
whites.
However, African-American men are disproportionately affected by
new HIV infections at a rate of six times that of white men and
three times more than Hispanic men.
Among women, HIV is 15 times as common among blacks as it is among
whites.